Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure

8 Feb-11 May 2025

Overview

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. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so. A new online platform documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future, will launch at earf.info.

This exhibition is produced and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol.

Dan Guthrie

Dan Guthrie is an artist who often works with words and the moving image to explore representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness. Selected exhibitions and screenings include: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, Spike Island and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2025); Absent Forces, Open City Documentary Festival (2024); Two Films, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne (2023); Spirit Messages touring programme, aemi (2023–2024); Selected 13 touring programme, FLAMIN and videoclub (2023); wave 4, Prismatic Ground, New York (2023); Forum Expanded, Berlinale, Berlin (2023); Right of Way, LUX, London (2023); and Short Film Programme, Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable (2022). In 2024, Guthrie was shortlisted for The Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award and awarded a DRABL Artist Grant.