24/7 (2021)

24/7 is an exhibition of sculptural works that negotiates the financialisation of time. Sleep is where rest and repair happens – but what if it is interrupted, or potentially obliterated? Seasonal and circadian rhythms shape life: from insects to mammals, oceanic tides to plant life. Sleep is where rest and repair happens – but what if it is interrupted, or potentially obliterated? From the migratory sleeplessness of Gambel’s white-crowned sparrow to the world-ecology of Amazon and Jeff Bezos’ quest for eternal life and space colonisation, 24/7 is a new body of work that explores sleep as the final frontier of late capitalism.

“Sleep will always collide with the demands of a 24/7 universe… hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and recently the need for friendship—have been remade into commodified or financialized forms. Sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present… The stunning, inconceivable reality is that nothing of value can be extracted from it.”

– Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the ends of sleep