A twisted look at life
British artist produces series of sculptures that are all tied up in knots
Alex Chinneck is proving to be knotty by nature.
After creating a series of sculptures that look like everyday things tied into knots — think fire extinguishers, mailboxes and building columns — the British artist has now twisted a grandfather clock into a surreal showstopper.
Titled Hickory Dickory Hokey Cokey, the work is entirely carved by hand. The clock’s face is painted onto the wood, and it’s encased with a sheet of curved glass that continues the bendy look of the piece. Chinneck’s 2018 piece Growing Up Gets Me Down was similar in design, but was a fully functioning grandfather clock.
The works echo the themes of Chinneck’s large-scale public artworks, which introduce fluidity to inflexible physical forms. His 2018 installation Open to the Public, for example, featured imagery that made it seem like a huge zipper was opening the outside of an abandoned 1960s-era office building.
In 2013, his work From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes created the illusion that the exterior of a house was slipping off the building’s frame and onto the ground. And in 2015, he crafted an installation that appeared as if a section of a London car park had been peeled back from the ground, suspending a red car upside down.
“It’s about creating public art that resonates with the public and that can be seen, understood and enjoyed by as many people as possible. We try to keep it technically complex but conceptually accessible and light,” Chinneck told Street Art News last month.
“I think sculpture is the re-imagination of the physical world that surrounds us. We take familiar materials, familiar objects and familiar structures and intertwine them with fantasy. We try to make the everyday world more extraordinary.”
Chinneck’s first foray into the knotted art realm came in 2018, when he bent and twisted the handle of a hand-carved broom. That same year he knotted a bronze fire extinguisher that was painted, patinated and waxed, eventually being produced in a limited edition of 20.
In 2019, he installed knotted red mailboxes overnight in three cities across the U.K. as part of a series dubbed Alphabetti Spaghetti.
“I really champion this idea of public art; I think there’s something exciting about arts existing outside gallery walls and without the necessity to be presented on a kind of cultural pedestal,” Chinneck said.
“I think it’s so important to break free from that and exist in the public world for the public free access, principally that’s the art form I champion.”