Opening hours Gallery: Wednesday to Sunday 12–5pm Café open: Tuesday and Sunday: 10am–4pm, Wednesday to Saturday: 10am–5pm.

Dan Guthrie

Dan Guthrie

Illustration by Gwyn Willey, in Ramon R. Willey’s The Black Boy School, Stroud 1844–1914, 1970. Edited by Dan Guthrie, 2024.

earf.info is an online platform that collects research related to artist Dan Guthrie’s new Spike Island exhibition Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure.

The exhibition imagines the future of the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in Guthrie’s hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire. It puts forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock; a theoretical term proposed by Guthrie to describe the act of acquiring an object with the intention of destroying it.

On earf.info, an interactive timeline traces the history of the Blackboy Clock alongside wider contested heritage debates in the UK. The site also hosts a journal with texts authored by Guthrie and other contributors; access materials and a self-care guide related to the commission; and a list of events programmed alongside each of Guthrie’s exhibitions.

Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is open at Spike Island from 8 February until 11 May 2025, and at Chisenhale Gallery from 6 June–17 August 2025.

Dan Guthrie

Dan Guthrie is an artist who often works with words and the moving image to explore representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness. Selected exhibitions and screenings include: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, Spike Island and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2025); Absent Forces, Open City Documentary Festival (2024); Two Films, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne (2023); Spirit Messages touring programme, aemi (2023–2024); Selected 13 touring programme, FLAMIN and videoclub (2023); wave 4, Prismatic Ground, New York (2023); Forum Expanded, Berlinale, Berlin (2023); Right of Way, LUX, London (2023); and Short Film Programme, Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable (2022). In 2024, Guthrie was shortlisted for The Arts Foundation Visual Arts Award and awarded a DRABL Artist Grant.

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Partners and Supporters

earf.info is co-published by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol. With the generous support of Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott. Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is commissioned and produced by Spike Island and Chisenhale Gallery, London. This exhibition is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation. 

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Preview night: Danielle Dean and Dan Guthrie

Friday 7 February 2025, 6–10pm Book your place

Dan Guthrie Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure

Saturday 8 February to Sunday 11 May 2025 Find out more about the exhibition

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Events

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Engagement

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Digital Commissions

Online Library
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