Feature: The Big Picture - Exhibition - The British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet at Hayward Gallery until April 17
Published: 3 March, 2011
Set your alarm: there’s a rare opportunity this weekend to see Christian Marclay’s highly acclaimed film The Clock in its 24-hour entirety.
Using a montage of clips from thousands of films showing scenes featuring clocks and watches or situations indicating a particular time of day, this is an extraordinary patchwork which also functions as a timepiece, always conveying the correct time, minute by minute, wherever it is shown.
This free event is part of British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, an exhibition of contemporary work by 39 artists currently on show at the Hayward Gallery.
Curators Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton selected the artists for their contribution to international contemporary art in the past five years.
All artworks included have been produced since 2005 and encompass sculpture, painting, installation, drawing, photography, film, video and performance, with many artists creating new works especially for the exhibition, several of which will premiere at the Hayward.
Works include Sarah Lucas’s biomorphic sculpture series NUDS (2009-10); George Shaw’s hallucinatory paintings of West Midlands council estates; Elizabeth Price’s seductive and unsettling film User Group Disco (2009) set to a 1980s soundtrack; Matthew Darbyshire’s exploration into taste and display in An Exhibition for Modern Living (2010) and Duncan Campbell’s examination of the public persona of Britain’s youngest-ever woman MP, Bernadette Devlin in Bernadette (2008).
Works on show for the first time include a specially commissioned bell by Steven Claydon, cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which will chime 21 times a day.
• The British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet is at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, SE1, until April 17. Admission £8 (concessions available). Full details at www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/festivals-series/british-art-show
Organised by Hayward Touring exhibitions since 1979, the British Art Show takes place every five years and tours to four different cities across the UK. The show made its debut in Nottingham earlier this year and after the Hayward Gallery it moves to Glasgow and Plymouth.
• Christian Marclay’s The Clock is being screened at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre this weekend. The film runs from 6.30pm on Saturday March 5 until 6.30pm on Sunday March 6. Free