Harrison’s Garden (Photo: Luke Jerram)
Our latest Curiosity of the Week is an installation of more than 2,000 clocks in Lincolnshire. This unusual creation, titled Harrison’s Garden, is the brainchild of artist Luke Jerram, and can currently be found at the National Trust’s Gunby Hall.
The title of the artwork refers to the famous clock maker John Harrison, who struggled for decades to make navigation at sea safer, by creating the most accurate clock the world had ever seen. Would he ever have imagined that there would be clocks in almost every room of every house and that they would shape society so profoundly?
Modern society has developed and arguably only been made possible, through the time pieces that surround us. We wake up, work, eat and sleep, when it’s time to do these things.
One of Harrison’s clocks (Photo: Luke Jerram)
Jerram’s installation is an imagined landscape and garden of clocks, with clocks being added all the time. Many of the clocks in this installation have been donated by the public, each carrying their own personal story and significance.
Visitors to Gunby Hall may wonder, how many times has each clock been glanced at by their owners, touched, moved, reset? What important and mundane events have been prompted by the clocks’ alarms and chimes ringing out? What might the art installation look like if the collection of clocks were assembled in another country or perhaps in 100 years time?
With around 2,000 clocks in the installation so far, the timepieces have been clustered into species and form islands, pathways and borders. Some clocks seem like classics of their time, others are a pastiche, pretending to be classical clocks of a previous era. Some clocks are on the march, whilst others seem to be in conversation with one another.
There are carriage clocks, which presumably have been given to employees in their retirement, travel clocks, anniversary clocks, children’s clocks, digital alarm and wall clocks. Clicking, ticking, the landscape of sound is beautiful, rhythmic and musical, but also at times unnerving. In this way, the installation seems alive, gently twitching.
Jerram’s ticking installation (Photo: Luke Jerram)
In our current age, the measurement and structure of time seems more important than ever, but many of these analogue clocks seem to have lost their value, their function in part replaced by clocks on our mobile phones, computers and other digital technology.
The installation is perhaps a reminder that we are all here now, simultaneously moving through time together. Our time on this earth is limited and precious. How much time have we lived; how much have we got left? Each with our own body clock, we calibrate ourselves each day through the man-made clocks which surround us.
The installation will be at Gunby Hall until 4th June 2018, before moving to Penrhyn Castle. For more information visit www.lukejerram.com/harrisons-garden.
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