Image credit: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure installation view. Courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Spike Island, Bristol
8 February – 11 May 2025
Chisenhale Gallery, London
6 June – 24 August 2025
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is a major new commission by artist Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness. By deliberately experimenting with form and language, Guthrie probes the limits of visual representation – questioning not only what is shown, but what remains unseen or unsayable on screen. This exploration encompasses the politics of visibility itself, asking how race, memory, and subjectivity are shaped by the act of looking.
This new commission continues Guthrie’s long-standing engagement with the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire. The clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a local watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed alcove on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock was restored in 1977 and 2004, and has remained a constant presence in Stroud throughout Guthrie’s life.
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure presents two videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock – a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the strategic acquisition of an object in order to destroy it. Across both videos, audio description and captions reject standardised, impersonal modes of description in favour of poetic interpretation and emotionally resonant dialogue – embedding access deeply into the aesthetic and political fabric of Guthrie’s commission.
Central to this body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and its methods for doing so. Alongside this exhibition, Guthrie has developed a new online platform – earf.info – documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future.
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure was commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol, with support from the Henry Moore Foundation. Please contact the artist directly at dan@danguthrie.net for more information about exhibiting or purchasing any of the works.
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Empty Alcove, 2025
Single channel video, 5 minutes
Image credit: Empty Alcove (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Image credit: An angled view, taken from the left, of an arc of four black chairs facing a vertical TV screen that’s mounted on a floor to ceiling beam positioned in front of a row of large multi-pane windows in a white walled gallery. The screen shows the top of stone building with a pointed roof, and centre of the frame is an empty alcove.
Image credit: Empty Alcove (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Image credit: Empty Alcove (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Empty Alcove is a proposal for a potential future: what if the Blackboy Clock figure was removed from public display? Framed within the entrance to the gallery is a five minute static shot of the clock in-situ, accompanied by sounds of daily life in Stroud, with the offensive figure digitally erased.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Camera Operator: Holly Antrum
Sound Recordist and Sound Designer: Felix Taylor
Colourist: Nielsan Bohl
Producers: Olivia Aherne and Carmen Juliá
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie
As part of the public programme for this touring commission, Empty Alcove was shown at SVA, Stroud, from 9 – 17 May 2025, a short walk away from the Blackboy Clock’s current location.
Rotting Figure, 2025
Single channel video, 5 minutes
Image description: An imposing black wooden box, three and a half metres high and seven metres long, takes up space in the corner of a white walled gallery. The top of the box reaches to just below the white latticed ceiling, and casts shadows behind it.
Image credit: Rotting Figure (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Image credit: Rotting Figure (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Image credit: Rotting Figure (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.
Rotting Figure is a proposal for an impossible future: what if the Blackboy Clock figure was destroyed? Inside a monolithic black box, a CG rendering of the figure slowly collapses; creaks and cracks echo out whilst the offensive imagery is deliberately obscured.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
CG Designer and Animator: Salvi De Sena
Sound Recordist and Sound Designer: Felix Taylor
Producers: Olivia Aherne and Carmen Juliá
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie
Rotting Figure is on current display as part of Blackground : murmures des mornes at CAPC, Bordeaux from 12 June 2026 – 28 March 2027, which uses the concept of radical un-conservation as one of its curatorial frameworks.
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earf.info, 2025 – ongoing
Website
Image description: A screenshot of a website, largely made of up black and red text on an off-white background, with the words ‘EMPTY ALCOVE / ROTTING FIGURE’ in capital letters in the top left corner, followed by a series of headings in sentence case that stretch across the top of the page. A content warning in red text about references to racism and racist imagery is followed by a few paragraphs describing the website and the commission its linked to. In the bottom right corner, a black box with white text announces that Mutiny have launched their campaign for the Blackboy Clock’s removal.
Image credit: earf.info (2025 – ongoing) home page documentation.
Image credit: earf.info (2025 – ongoing) timeline documentation.
Image credit: earf.info (2025 – ongoing) access materials documentation.
earf.info is an online research platform which includes an interactive timeline that traces the ongoing history of the Blackboy Clock, a journal with texts authored by Guthrie and other contributors, access materials and a self-care guide related to the commissioned artworks, and a list of events that were programmed alongside the exhibitions. Click here to visit earf.info and explore the resources.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Editors: Olivia Aherne and Carmen Juliá
Assistant Editors: Rachel Be-Yun Wang and Zhejun Gao
Editorial Support: Phoebe Cripps
Research Assistants: Holly Antrum and Tommy Madison
Contributors: Tendai Mutambu, Lola Olufemi, Tatenda Shamiso and Vanessa Onwuemezi
Web Development: An Endless Supply
With the generous support of Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.
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Texts, Reviews and Press
Black Automata and Racial Machinations, Tendai Mutambu, earf.info
‘Let it rot’: artist says Stroud’s ‘racist’ blackboy clock should be destroyed, Lanre Bakare, The Guardian
The death of Stroud’s racist clock, Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Plaster Magazine
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure review, Daniel Culpan, Art Monthly
LET'S PUT IT PLAINLY FOR ONCE, Lola Olufemi, earf.info
Danielle Dean and Dan Guthrie’s Filmic Counter-Narratives, Vanessa Peterson, Frieze
Interview with Dan Guthrie, Olivia Aherne, Chisenhale Gallery
Broken, rotting, under the tarp, Tatenda Shamiso, earf.info
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure review, Zarina Muhammad, The White Pube
Consultation: What Should Exist?, Vanessa Onwuemezi, earf.info
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure review, Clare Carolin, Moving Image Review & Art Journal