Following on from her interview with Conrad Shawcross, Francesca Goodwin reviews his latest installation 'Timepiece' at The Roundhouse

The sound that envelops visitors entering The Roundhouse’s central space is silence. Instead of the anticipatory hum of an assembling audience and the palpable sweat of readying performers, the doors open upon the bowels of an exposed industrial cavern that seems to echo with an almost pre-historic gravitas.

The only light emanates from three tiny, blinding bulbs spinning an ethereal waltz from the arms of a suspended metal machine. The rotating arms throw dark spectres of swooping shadows across the briefly illuminated blackness and, as the light hits the tip of the high gnomon below, spindles of dark fan out as rapidly as they contract. Accustomed to the paradoxical nature of the light-both blindingly bright and impenetrably black- realisation dawns that this rhythmic pirouette is forming the hands of a pulsating clock.

In these twilight hours before the show’s opening, a voice can be heard ricocheting amidst the twenty-four encircling pillars that, for a moment, appear to spin like a carousel- tied up by their own shadowy dance. Illuminated by his mechanical cast, Shawcross is calling time.

‘Cast’ seems the most appropriate word for what is otherwise a cold metal machine. The smooth pirouettes of the arms rather demand a bodily status- symptomatic of Shawcross’ intense focus upon craftsmanship and the hands on approach of his working method.

The mechanism is almost imbued with a life force- the imprint of a makers’ devotion. As ballet dancers impart a tangible sensuality to their thrusts and leaps, so too is the relationship between man and machine a physical one. The idea of the forthcoming music and dance based performances, running in tandem with the exhibition, would no longer seem to be ‘in response’ to the piece but rather in partnership with, what has become, a dancer in itself.

Wandering around this lunarscape of fleeting forms, there is a sense of timelessness. A rhythm emerges from the chaos, guiding the unsuspecting visitor into an unbidden game of shadow chess. There is a purposeful energy amidst the quiet, which, though experienced, is impossible to fully comprehend.

Somehow the ‘Timepiece’ that, operates in the same way as a humble pocket watch, has been transformed into a beacon of cosmological proportions. A sense of the Sublime has been unleashed from the ubiquity of the everyday- channelling the unspoken music of the spheres

The structure itself, Shawcross explains, has indeed been built to outlive its short spell in the Roundhouse- as well as being designed by a team of talented artisans and mechanics; many of the parts have been sourced from satellite programs in America. As he continues to describe how the tilt at the tip of the gnomon recreates the axial tilt of the earth, integral to the maintenance of our seasons and everyday lives, the awareness of a galactic context to the piece is reified.

Shawcross does not however, consider himself an academic. Although evidentially absorbed with the research of ancient civilisations and the mathematical theorems of time and mechanics, the knowledge is employed to an aesthetic purpose. ‘Timepiece’ may primarily follow the dogmas of western delineations of time into rules of twelve but Shawcross has written in new sets of relationships as to how the installation operates.

The result is that time flips and inverts as much as uniformly progresses. Visitors may be able to tell the time by the shadows but, experience of time within the space is of a fluid and distorted nature. The aim, Shawcross suggests, is to challenge the regimented tropes by which we live our lives- to turn time back to its primordial, cosmological roots and, to reassess the stability of what we assume to be certainties.

Exiting the space, it is as if bidden by Puck at the close of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream':

If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumber’d here, while we visions did appear

For all its scientific veneer it is not knowledge that is being strived for. Poetry is woven within the theatre’s walls and, by stepping amidst the shadows; the visitor is as much the originator of this poetry as the blazing LEDs.

Turning back for a moment before relinquishing the, now naturalised, beat of the shadowy realm, Shawcross’ silhouette blazes in the glare of the lights. With head bowed before the crowd he appears both prophetic and pensive. Upon encountering a machine, it is in contemplation of inter-human relationships that we leave.

Tickets for Timepiece will be available on a pay-what-you-like basis.

A programme of performance and music will accompany the installation. Artists and choreographers featured include Wayne McGregor and Siobhan Davies. The London Contemporary Orchestra will also produce work in response to the installation during the month.

Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8EH, Aug 1-25

roundhouse.org.uk/timepiece