Press Release

Pro Tem

Anya Gallaccio, Darren Almond, Sam Taylor-Wood, Tonico Lemos Auad, Rivane Neuenschwander

4^th June – 1^st July 2011

Hyde Park, London

This exhibition explores the idea of passing time. All of the featured artists deal with objects that deteriorate over time, or time as a repetitive cycle. The exhibition acts as a reminder that life is short and everything fades away in time.

Anya Gallaccio works with the theme of deterioration over time. She uses fresh flowers in both Preserve Beauty, 2000, and Red on Green, 1992; allowing them to wilt and transform naturally over the course of the exhibition. In Aspire she highlights the passing of time by letting candles burn, symbolising the inevitability of death. Gallaccio makes viewers realise how precious time is; her work constantly transforms and ultimately destroys itself, meaning her work can only last as a memory.

Tonico Lemos Auad also works with organic materials and the idea of transformation over time. Auad pin-pricks portraits onto bunches of bananas, which can only be seen as the fruit begins to rot and decay over time. There is only a short period of time that it can be seen though, as the bananas completely blacken and the image is lost.

Time is integral to Darren Almond’s work. In Tide, 2008, 600 digital clocks completely cover a wall. Every minute the mechanisms causing the numbers to change go off in unison, causing a loud clacking sound. Mono Chrono Pneumatic Red works with the same theme – a large 10 metre clock with a mechanism at the back which loudly changes the time every minute. Almond’s work constantly reminds us that another minute has gone by. From anywhere in the gallery the sound of the clocks changing is unavoidable, relentlessly reminding us that our time is running out.

The image of a bowl of fruit in Sam Taylor Wood’s Still Life, 2001, is like a classic vanitas painting. The video then shows the fruit decomposing until it is nothing but a grey mass. The film shows us deterioration over time, reminding us again of the shortness of life and that time is passing us by.

Rivane Neuenschwander’s Chove Chuva, 2002, is an installation where 25 aluminium buckets are suspended at different heights. The buckets are full of water, and a small hole in the bottom of each bucket allows the water to drip constantly into buckets on the floor. Every 4 hours a gallery employee has to refill the water into the highest buckets, using the buckets from the floor, and the cycle starts all over again.  

The gallery is a temporary structure which will be built in Hyde Park, which will be disposed of at the end of the exhibition, along with most of the art work.