Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, 2025
Solo exhibition

Spike Island, Bristol
8 February – 11 May 2025

Chisenhale Gallery, London
6 June – 24 August 2025

Image description: A large white walled gallery with a white latticed ceiling, filled with natural light that streams in from a row of multi-pane windows. On the left of the image, an arc of four black chairs face a vertical TV screen mounted on a black floor to ceiling beam, which shows the top of a stone building against a cloudy blue sky. In the opposite corner diagonally, on the right of the image, an large imposing black wooden box, stretching the width of half the gallery, with the top reaching just below the ceiling, casts shadows behind it.

Image credit: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure installation view. Courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate.

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 Spike Island and Chisenhale Gallery with support from the Henry Moore Foundation. Please contact the artist directly for more information about viewing, exhibiting or purchasing any of the works.

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Empty Alcove, 2025
Single channel video, 5 minutes

Image description: Framed within a open white doorway, 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: An angled view, taken from the right, 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 descriptions: A closed up, head on view 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. 

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.

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 description: The dark walled and carpeted interior of the black wooden box. Four chairs arranged in a grid face a vertical TV screen mounted on the far wall. On the screen is an computer generated image of a figure tightly wrapped in black plastic and red tape.

Image credit: Rotting Figure (2025) installation view, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate. 

Image description: On the left side of the image is the inside of the open ended black wooden box, with a computer generated heap of black shiny plastic on the vertical TV screen. Splitting the image in half is one of the walls of the wooden box; to the right of it, a side on view of another video installation at the far end of the gallery. 

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. 

Rotting Figure is currently on 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: Homepage, earf.info (2025 – ongoing).  


Image description: A screenshot of a website, largely made of up black and text on an off-white background, with the words ‘EMPTY ALCOVE / ROTTING FIGURE’ in capital letters in the top left corner. On the right side of the image is a timeline entry – ‘15 August 1974: Blackboy Clock is removed for restoration’ – followed by a paragraph of description, some footnoted black and white photographs, and some tags and navigational tools. This is overlaid over a series of headlines sorted in ascending chronological order that date from 4 May 2022 to 6 October 2025; we can only see the first few words of most headlines, as the overlaid timeline entry cuts them off. 

Image credit: Timeline entry: Blackboy Clock is removed for restoration, 15 August 1974, earf.info (2025 – ongoing).


Image descriptions: 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. The heading ‘Access Materials’ is highlighted in red. Below is a transcript of an audio description, which shows timestamped dialogue that alternates between paragraphs of left aligned black text and right aligned red text. 


Image credit: Empty Alcove audio description, earf.info (2025 – ongoing).  

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 recordings of events that were programmed alongside the exhibitions. 

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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 

Tour Diary I – V
Dan Guthrie, earf.info