What is time?
Without a physical presence, can we be certain it exists at all? And if it does not, how do we so consistently observe its effects, year after year, day after day, second after second? What, in fact, do these measures even mean?
Within the philosophy of time, three broad perspectives emerge: that time is a real, independent entity; that it exists only within the mind; or that it is nothing more than a measure of change, something that arises through the continual transformation of the world.
It is this third idea that holds particular resonance. Here, time is not a thing in itself, but something contingent on physical processes such as the growth of a plant, the ageing of a body, or the breaking of a wave. These changes can be measured against more regular and predictable cycles such as the swing of a pendulum or the rotation of the Earth. In a world where nothing changed, time would become meaningless. Perhaps it would not disappear entirely, but it would become imperceptible.
This raises an unsettling question: what would happen if our measures of time shifted?
If every clock began to tick at a different rate, how would our perception respond? If the Earth appeared to complete its rotation in 22 hours rather than 24, would we conclude that time itself had slowed, or that the planet had quickened? Would we cling to the familiar structure of the 24-hour day, even as daylight and darkness drifted out of alignment with our clocks? Or would we construct new systems to stabilise our sense of reality?
The extent to which measurement shapes our understanding of time, and by extension space, is quietly profound. It lends the world an air of certainty, as though everything might ultimately be known, defined, and mastered.
And yet, the visual arts offer a subtle resistance to this impulse.
Within the frame, change is suspended. An artwork presents a fixed image, and in the absence of visible transformation, time seems to dissolve. The world inside the frame becomes detached from duration, a self-contained reality that cannot evolve, decay, or progress. It reflects something recognisable, yet fundamentally unreachable, a moment that can never fully exist again.
At the same time, this stillness can heighten our awareness of time’s passage. An artwork that is unmistakably of a particular moment, through its imagery, materials, or methods, becomes a conduit to the past. Its unchanging nature throws the mutability of the external world into sharper relief. In this way, art performs a paradox: it both erases time and intensifies our awareness of it.
This tension sits at the centre of my own practice.
I work with materials that carry an inherent relationship to time, clock mechanisms, delicate petals, and the suggestion of motion under gravity, and place them into conditions of suspension. Gears are halted mid-turn, petals do not wither, and butterflies remain poised in perpetual flight. Each element implies movement, decay, or progression, yet is held in a state that denies it.
The result is deliberately uncanny. These objects belong to processes that cannot be stopped, and yet here they appear to have been arrested. Their stillness draws attention not only to what is present, but to what is absent, the passage they should be undergoing.
Of course, this pause is an illusion. Beyond the frame, the world continues its ceaseless transformation. Time does not stop.
But perhaps that is precisely the point.
In a culture that increasingly frames time as something scarce, urgent, and relentlessly forward-driving, the suggestion of a pause, however artificial, offers a counterbalance. It creates a space, however brief, in which urgency softens and reflection becomes possible.
It is, for the record, precisely 36 minutes and 52 seconds.
As an aside: in the late 18th century, revolutionary France briefly adopted a decimal system of time consisting of ten hours in a day, one hundred minutes to each hour, and one hundred seconds to each minute. While elegantly rational, the system coexisted awkwardly with established conventions and proved impractical, particularly for navigation. It was eventually abandoned, though rare decimal clocks still survive, their unfamiliar faces subtly disorienting to modern eyes.
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