Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure installation view. Courtesy Spike Island, Bristol. Photographer Rob Harris.
Spike Island, Bristol
8 February — 11 May 2025
Chisenhale Gallery, London
6 June — 17 August 2025
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is a new commission and solo exhibition by artist Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, with a particular interest in examining how these manifest in rural areas. His latest commission continues his ongoing exploration of 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 niche on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock has undergone restorations in 1977 and 2004 and has remained a constant presence throughout Guthrie’s life in Stroud.
Guthrie’s exhibition presents two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock — a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it — along with creative access materials.
Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so. Accompanying this is a new online platform — earf.info — that documents the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future, alongside new texts by Guthrie and invited writers, thinkers and artists.
❦ ❦ ❦
Empty Alcove, 2025
Single channel video, 5 minutes
A proposal for a potential future: present-day footage of the clock in-situ with the Blackboy figure digitally removed in post-production.
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
❦ ❦ ❦
Rotting Figure, 2025
Single channel video, 5 minutes
A proposal for an impossible future: a rendering of the Blackboy Clock figure gradually collapses whilst covered by a tarp that obscures the offensive imagery.
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
❦ ❦ ❦
earf.info, 2025 - ongoing
Website
An online platform that includes an interactive timeline that traces the history of the Blackboy Clock and wider contested heritage debates in the UK.
Click here to find out more.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie / Editors: Olivia Aherne, Carmen Juliá / Assistant Editor: Rachel Be-Yun Wang / Editorial Support: Phoebe Cripps / Research Assistants: Holly Antrum, Tommy Madison / Web Development: An Endless Supply / With the generous support of Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.
❦ ❦ ❦
Press / Reviews
‘Let it rot’: artist says Stroud’s ‘racist’ blackboy clock should be destroyed
Lanre Bakare, The Guardian, February 2025