Christian Marclay: The Clock
ACMI's new award-winning installation is a mesmerising collage of time — that runs for 24 hours.
Overview
The most popular piece of video art ever created is coming to Melbourne, and making time to see it is recommended. Of course, when you're staring at The Clock, all you'll have is time. You won't be able to avoid it.
First premiering in 2010 at London's White Cube Gallery, Christian Marclay's mammoth installation is comprised of images of clocks and watches, plus other mentions of and references to the seconds, minutes and hours passing. In total, more than 12,000 clips are featured, cobbled together from an enormous range of films and television shows. The piece is both a meditation on time, humanity's fascination with it and its relationship to our mortality, and an epic trip through eight decades of cinema history.
With The Clock's temporal collage unravelling in real time, that means one thing — yes, every second of the day and night is represented. The full version runs for an entire 24 hours, operating as the most intriguing timepiece you're ever likely to come across.
As a result, when Marclay's masterpiece comes to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) between Wednesday, January 23 and Sunday, March 10, 2019, it will screen in two formats. You can drop by daily during ACMI's opening hours to see time pass, or you can settle in for the long haul once a week across the seven weeks. Yes, from 10am each Thursday between January 24–March 7, The Clock will screen its whole 24-hour run, which you can get cosy and watch.
Taking place in ACMI's Gallery 1, entry is free, with The Clock marking both a return and a finale for the Federation Square spot. Back in 2008, the first solo exhibition held in the gallery was all about Marclay — and this will mark its last before ACMI closes for its huge revamp.
Images: Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010. Photos: Ben Westoby, courtesy of the White Cube, London.
Information
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