Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, 2025


Image description: An installation view of Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure at Chisenhale Gallery. The gallery is a large well lit white walled room with a well worn concrete floor and a white latticed ceiling. On the left side of the gallery, four black chairs face a vertical TV screen mounted on a floor to ceiling beam positioned in front of a row of large multi-pane windows. The screen shows the top of a building against a blue sky, and above the chairs, a black oval speaker in a transparent domed covering is suspended from the ceiling. On the right side of the gallery, an imposing black wooden box, three and a half metres high and seven metres long, takes up space in the opposite corner, casting shadows behind it.

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 is commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol, with support from the Henry Moore Foundation.

Click here to read more about the show on the Spike Island website. 

Click here to read more about the show on the Chisenhale Gallery website. 

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Empty Alcove, 2025

Single channel video, stereo sound, 5 minutes

Image description: Images 1 to 3 show different angles of the installation of Empty Alcove at Chisenhale Gallery; four black chairs facing a vertical TV screen showing the top of a building against a blue sky, mounted on a floor to ceiling beam positioned in front of a row of large multi-pane windows, with a black oval speaker in a transparent domed covering suspended from the ceiling over the chairs. Image 1 is a view from the open entrance to the gallery, perfectly framing the installation within the doorway, with part of a front of house desk in frame; image 2 is a side-on shot of the installation; and image 3 is a head-on shot.

Images 4 to 6 show close up details of Empty Alcove on view at Spike Island; three head-on shots of the same video on a vertical TV screen against a white wall, but this time the screen is floor mounted, with most of the mount cropped out of frame. Image 4 shows the top of a building against a blue sky, with an empty alcove in the middle of the screen; image 5 shows a similar image but the sky is slightly cloudier, and the caption ‘[birdsong & kids’ voices ebb and flow]’ is overlaid in white bracketed text at the bottom of the screen; and image 6 shows a similar image but this time the caption ‘[time passes with ease]’ is overlaid in red bracketed text at the bottom of the screen.

Image credits: Empty Alcove (2025) installation views. Images 1 - 3, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate. Images 4 - 6, courtesy Spike Island, Bristol, photographer Rob Harris. 

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 by itself at SVA, Stroud, from 9 May – 17 May 2025, a short walk away from the Blackboy Clock’s current location. More information about this presentation is available here. 
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Camera Operator: Holly Antrum
Sound Recordist and Sound Designer: Felix Taylor
Colourist: Nielsan Bohl
Producers: Olivia Aherne for Chisenhale Gallery, Carmen Juliá for Spike Island
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla for Chisenhale Gallery
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie

Click here to read the Empty Alcove captioning transcript.
Click here to read the Empty Alcove audio description transcript.

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Rotting Figure, 2025

Single channel video, stereo sound, 5 minutes

Image descriptions: Images 1 to 3 show different angles of the installation of Rotting Figure at Chisenhale Gallery. Image 1 shows an imposing black wooden box, three and a half metres high and seven metres long, taking up space and casting a large shadow against one of the walls of the gallery. The box has an open back and invites you into its dark carpeted interior, which has chairs angled towards something out of sight. Image 2 shows the inside of the box, which has four chairs arranged in a grid and facing a vertical TV screen mounted on the far interior wall, which shows a computer generated heap of black shiny plastic. On the right hand side of the image, you can see a side on view of Empty Alcove at the other end of the gallery. Image 3 shows the full interior of the box but this time on the screen is a computer generated image of a figure tightly wrapped in black plastic and red tape.

Images 4 to 6 show close up details of Rotting Figure on view at Spike Island; three head-on shots of the same video on a vertical TV screen against a black wall. Image 4 shows a computer generated image of a figure tightly wrapped in black plastic and red tape, with the caption ‘[unease slithers through cracks]’ overlaid in red bracketed text at the bottom of the screen; image 5 shows the same figure mid collapse with the caption ‘[wood creaks, ongoing]’ overlaid in white bracketed text at the bottom of the screen; and image 6 shows a heap of black shiny plastic piled up at the bottom of the screen.

Image credits: Rotting Figure (2025) installation views. Images 1 - 3, courtesy Chisenhale Gallery, London, photographer Andy Keate. Images 4 - 6, courtesy Spike Island, Bristol, photographer Rob Harris.

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 for Chisenhale Gallery, Carmen Juliá for Spike Island
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla for Chisenhale Gallery
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie

Click here to read the Rotting Figure captioning transcript.
Click here to read the Rotting Figure audio description transcript.

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earf.info, 2025 – ongoing

Website

Image descriptions: Screenshots of the website earf.info. The website is largely made of up black and red text on an off-white background, and in all screenshots, the words ‘EMPTY ALCOVE / ROTTING FIGURE’ in capital letters is in the top left corner, followed by the words ‘Timeline’, ‘Citations’, ‘Journal’, ‘Access Materials’, ‘Events’ and ‘Credits’ equally spaced out across the top of the screen, with ‘Credits’ in the top right.

Image 1 is a screenshot of the home page, which features a written overview of the project; image 2 is a screenshot of the timeline page, which has a rows of dated entries that continue off the screen; image 3 is a screenshot of one of those entries, ‘Blackboy Clock is removed for restoration’ which is overlaid on the right half of the screen; image 4 is a screenshot of an essay by Lola Olufemi called ‘LET’S PUT IT PLAINLY FOR ONCE’, which is a large continuous paragraph of black text with the word ‘blackamoor’ in red standing out; image 5 is a screenshot of the audio description transcript for Empty Alcove, which alternates between left aligned black text and right aligned red text; and image 6 is a screenshot of the Events page which has a list of titles of their events, the contributors to them and the dates on which they happened.

Image credit: earf.info (2025 – ongoing) documentation. Images 1 - 6, earf.info screenshots. 

earf.info is online platform that includes research related to Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure. This includes an interactive timeline with citations that traces the ongoing history of the Blackboy Clock and wider contested heritage debates in the UK, 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 website’s resources.

Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Editors: Olivia Aherne, Carmen Juliá
Assistant Editors: Rachel Be-Yun Wang and Zhejun Gao
Editorial Support: Phoebe Cripps
Research Assistants: Holly Antrum, Tommy Madison
Contributors: Tendai Mutambu, Lola Olufemi, Tatenda Shamiso, Vanessa Onwuemezi
Web Development: An Endless Supply
With the generous support of Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.

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Press / Reviews


‘Let it rot’: artist says Stroud’s ‘racist’ blackboy clock should be destroyed
Lanre Bakare, The Guardian, February 2025
The death of Stroud’s racist clock
Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Plaster, February 2025

Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Daniel Culpan, Art Monthly, March 2025

Danielle Dean and Dan Guthrie’s Filmic Counter-Narratives
Vanessa Peterson, Frieze, April 2025

The Best Shows to See Across the UK This Spring
Critic’s Guide, Frieze, April 2025

This Summer’s Must-See Contemporary Art Exhibitions In London, And Beyond Mahoro Seward, British Vogue, June 2025

Dan Guthrie, Chisenhale Gallery, exhibition review: ‘Fantasy of erasure’
Sarah Birch, Hackney Citizen, June 2025

Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Zarina Muhammad, The White Pube, June 2025

Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Clare Carolin, Moving Image Review & Art Journal, November 2025

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Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is available for sale in an edition of 5 + 2 AP. Pricing will increase as the work sells out. For more information about purchasing the work, please contact the artist directly at dan@danguthrie.net.