Circadian Rhythms

Artists: Maarten Baas, David Beattie, Suki Chan, Tehching Hsieh, Jitish Kallat, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Barbara Knezevic, Michael Landy, Rivane Neuenschwander, Michael John Whelan                                                                                                       
Curated by Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney in association with the APC Microbiome Centre, UCC   

All life on earth operates to a daily 24-hour cycle—through rhythmic patterns of activity that are known as Circadian Rhythms. In partnership with APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, the Glucksman is pleased to present an exhibition of Irish and international artists who explore Circadian Rhythms through reflections on time, the cadence of working life, and sleeping patterns, as well as through the impact of modern technologies on biological life.

The disruption of the body’s natural clock is captured in Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance (1980-81). For the duration of the year, the artist punched a time clock in his studio every hour, day and night, and photographed his appearance. The exhibition features elements remade by the artist, including a stop-animation film of his self-portrait photographs, time cards, and artist statements. Caoimhe Kilfeather’s works induce a feeling of liminality through an evocation of the ambivalence of dusk and dawn, the transitional hours between night and day. A variety of carefully made objects and images—monochrome photographs, sculptures, weavings—are suggestive of a world of reticent lyricism and melancholia.

Barbara Knezevic’s expansive sculptural installation Exquisite Tempo Sector combines a range of natural and artificial materials to explore human, material, geological and ecological durations. Candle sculptures flicker. Liquids evaporate silently. House-plants gradually unfurl to reveal tender, pale green leaves that gradually become darker and tougher. Michael Landy’s Nourishment is a series of 12 etchings of different weeds that draws on ideas of hostility and survival. He collected specimens and brought them back to his studio, where over several months he nurtured and observed them for as many hours as there was daylight. 

Jitish Kallat’s work delves into ideas of time, sleep, movement, vision and perception in an interplay of the everyday and the cosmological; a meteorite-like mass is carved with multiple small eyes, a cast-concrete mattress metamorphoses into a motorway bridge, meditative drawings capture chance formations of rain water. Michael John Whelan explores the darkest locations in the world through sound art and large format photography. Certified by different organisations, the sites in his work Darkness had no need were selected to provide the best conditions for viewing the night sky, away from the effects of light pollution. 

David Beattie makes visible the ongoing impact of light on our physical surroundings. In A Quarter Turn to Face the Light, a solar panel powers a small bulb with the resulting orb getting brighter and dimmer depending on the available sunlight. His diptych of polyurethane foam is exposed to light during the run of the exhibition, gradually discolouring over time. Rivane Neuenschwander’s flip clock, mounted high on the gallery wall, perennially shows a time of 00:00; each time the figures flip over they again reveal 00:00. If this is a countdown, the expected event never arrives but is forever imminent. 

Maarten Baas produces artworks that lie at the intersection of visual art, performance, and design. Real Time: Sweeper’s Clock is a 12-hour film documenting two handymen sweeping refuse in two lines that function as the hands of a manual clock. An impressionistic and lyrical study of London’s diverse population, Suki Chan’s 2-channel film Sleep Walk, Sleep Talk contrasts the movements of people on their way to and from work with their individual efforts to enjoy free time. Their adherence to the shifting patterns of time reveals an inherent adaptability to the cycles of night and day, work and leisure.

Circadian Rhythms is supported by APC Microbiome Centre, The Arts Council Ireland, and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.