Tick Tack Tick Tack Tick

Stuart Whipps

TTTTT research by Whipps focuses on the persistent dichotomy between art and science with the aim of disrupting it. He has opened up his art practice to inputs from the disciplines of geology, horticulture and dance, combining them in contemporary art settings to create nuanced readings. The resulting productions (artefacts, exhibitions and publications) allow for the emergence of a new sort of puzzle, which materialises through poesis in these different and often unrelated fields. Whipps developed a co-working methodology that drew on expertise from Dr Andrew Rees (geology), University of Birmingham, Tom Brown, Head Gardener, West Dean Gardens and William Bracewell, First Soloist, Royal Ballet. This methodology was applied referencing a series of seemingly disconnected artistic nodal points, including: photographs taken at a surrealist sculpture garden in Mexico, archival material of the Scottish oil industry, stories of stolen flowers from a garden in North Wales. Using these nodes, plus others, Whipps elicited responses from the experts to inform his findings, which in turn were utilised in the production and presentation of new projections, prints and structural installation. They provided an accessible and common ground between these fields of knowledge, inviting visitors to meditate on the relationships that those fields can create when they collide in the new ways afforded by Whipps’s work. This research has been enacted through a series of national solo art exhibitions at Spike Island, Bristol, DCA, Dundee; plus international group shows: CAPC, France, and the Irish Architecture Association, Ireland. Whipps’s research has also been disseminated in monograph publications: ‘Feeling With Fingers That See’ and ‘White Ashes Fell’ as well as in a group publication, ‘Le Musée Se Met Au Vert!’ published by Musée Des Beaux-Arts Bordeaux. The research has been supported through two Arts Council England project grants and the Henry Moore Institute.

Artworks

Tick, Tack, Tick, Tack, Tick, Tack

Stuart Whipps

Exhibitions

Click on these PDF's to see examples of selected art works, exhibitions, publications and writting

Publications

Writing

'If Wishes Were Thrushes, Beggars Would Eat Birds' Review

Studio International

Press

"4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux

Reviews

‘Isle of Slingers’ at Spike Island Bristol

Review

“At one time I was so impressed, so enthralled by the beauty of colour and form that I wanted to perpetuate it forever. Long before I knew about movies, I tried to imitate the camera and say ‘tick’ when I was moved by something, feeling that I was recording this particular scene for ever, and then I would say ‘tack’ when it was over. My mental film clips lasted longer and longer. First they would just be a few seconds and then, after about a year, several minutes. I would say ‘tick’ and then something ugly would spoil the scene or something boring would happen and I would say ‘tack’. When I was about eight, I said ‘tick’ one day and forgot to say ‘tack’ and it has been running ever since, this interior camera.”

– Edward James, Swans Reflecting Elephants

Videos

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