Radical Slowness

Group exhibition at The Lock-Up, 27 March to 15 May 2022.
Curated by Ann May Kirk and Tai Mitsuji. Works by Akil Ahmat, Emma Fielden, Dean Cross, Izabella Pluta, Aude Parichot and Tané Andrews. Photographer: Ben Adams.

What does it mean to do slowness? What does it mean to break with the whirring pace of the present and the unabating velocity of our time? What does slow art offer us in a fast world? These questions—these provocations—lie at the heart of RADICAL SLOWNESS.

In RADICAL SLOWNESS, the never-ending cadence of our everyday gives way to a different pace: slow time. Through a series of artistic interventions, the exhibition pulls into focus a multitude of temporalities that usually exist out of sight. Within the historical walls of The Lock-Up, new visions appear: an ocean of digital water endlessly laps around the base of a stone, an alarm clock is caught in the half-seconds that follow midnight, and two galaxies slowly hurtle towards one another, destined to meet in four billion years. Here, time is reframed. It is rescued from a state of dormancy, and is revealed to be the very solvent of existence—an invisible substance which our bodies wade through every day.

– Read the full catalogue essay by Tai Mitsuji and Anna May Kirk here.