Conrad Shawcross - Weaving Installations

Nervous System

Conrad Shawcross - Nervous System

Conrad Shawcross - Nervous System

Quote from the Saatchi Gallery website about the installation:
"Take an impossible machine design by Rube Goldberg, a contraption built by Heath Robinson, and cross it with a junk sculpture by Jean Tinguely, and you might get something a bit like Conrad Shawcross’s The Nervous System. Ridiculously mammoth, and perilously rickety, Shawcross’s monstrous structure is a testament to Luddite technology.
Handcrafted from oak timber, pieced together like a giant Meccano™ set, The Nervous System
His improbable system of cogs and pulleys constantly churn out a perfectly woven rope. Beyond being an installation in itself, The Nervous System is also an artwork that makes art: the colourful cord pours out of the machine like paint, piling on the floor like an ever-expanding abstract sculpture." is a serious feat of amateur engineering. Mesmerising in its simplistic complexity, Shawcross’s sculpture offers a certain mysticism through making: beyond experiencing this sculpture as an object (with all its creaking noise and grinding movement), it is also a working spinning machine."

Chord

Conrad Shawcross - Chord

Conrad Shawcross - Sketch for Chord

Chord is an installation in the old Kingsway Tram tunnel in central London. The two machines weave yarn together into a thick piece of rope as they move apart down the tunnel. Initially starting out directly opposite each other the two machines will slowly move and rotate, becoming a timeline of the exhibition and attempting to map specific times in its creation.

Quote from Timeout:
"But it isn't the path of London history or even transport history that 'Chord' will be measuring over its four-week installation. It will be recording the path of time and of its own existence. 'The rope that Chord will produce will become a timeline for the exhibition, with every section of it traceable back to the specific duration of time over which it was made', Shawcross explains. 'It acts as a visual metaphor for the fact that we perceive time in a linear way. I'm not an expert on the subject but whether time is actually linear is an ongoing debate within science, so Chord can also be a visual metaphor for weaving all these ideas together. And this strange tunnel under London is the perfect space in which to create this work."