In Timekeeper Finlay Abbott Ellwood (Æ) considers the structural character of cultivated space, be it physical or temporal, and how it is shaped by the idiosyncratic capabilities and identities of its keepers.
In Æ’s paintings, allotments and calendars function as motifs that reflect the dual presence of vectorised space. Filled, planted and penned into these spaces are events realised by their keepers, but also duties allocated by some other source. This raises questions of authority and endowment - who regulates, who ministers, who is sovereign? The question of ‘who?’ is asked out across the municipal field, the cosmic sky, and inwardly into personal responsibility, reason and self-accountability. Tied to duty and outcome is also the problem of judgement, who is qualified to judge when the architecture of these spaces reflects the keeper’s psyche, something continually carved out from the timeframe of the present moment.
In these works, time and the objects that make it apparent are depicted through inter-related symbols. Shadow-casting objects such as sundials, menhirs and headstones are vertical markers and are symbolically equivalent. They exist like stage flats circling the edge of what is known, like a projected border that contains everything we are and experience. In Æ’s work the harnessing of time is examined as a mechanism of power, which has been passed down or ‘stolen’ through successive authorities, from sun and celestial phenomena to local bell towers and market square clocks, this highlights a shifting perception of time, from something directly perceived to something administered. The time-technology here exists in the interaction between observer, object and change.
The paintings develop through incremental adjustments, with earlier motifs carried forward to be re-registered across successive layers, like memories pulled through different time frames. Each painting incorporates a docking-in card headed by the directive “YOU ARE YOUR OWN TIMEKEEPER.” its presence implies responsibility and introduces a system of record, a form of space defining that mirrors the process of painting itself. Scraps of language, found and self-generated are generous, and valued for their multiple meanings. Often, lifting or developing phrases away from their “home” destabilises their origins and allows Æ to reset their significance and enter them into a field of associations. The act of painting becomes a parallel system of cultivation: a space kept, altered and judged through sustained attention.
The work investigates how these architectures of power, projection, care and conscience define our spaces, structuring what endures and what is permitted to change.