"When you see the moving spools above your head, there's a sensation of a curious cross between a multicoloured metallic spider and some sort of alien creature trying to pass through a portal into another dimension. Thin threads descending from the heaven above, grabbed by the machine of man to twist them into a thick cord that slowly extrudes into our plane of existence."
"For his part, Shawcross has a fascination with space and how the seemingly random can be ordered and how what looks like ordered celestial physics is actually quite random in nature. The clockwork spools above the head appear controlled, yet they exhibit a form of chaotic randomness, meaning the patterns in the thread they weave will never repeat themselves. In a way, they reminded me of how the internet security firm Cloudflare uses the randomness of patterns in nature to generate its security keys."
Umbilical is a large moving sculpture installed in a windowless East London warehouse that slowly weaves threads into a thick rope. Rotating structures and clockwork spools feed and twist the threads into cord that piles around the room. The moving spools create a visceral, otherworldly presence reminiscent of a multicoloured metallic spider or an alien passing through a portal. The mechanism produces patterns that appear ordered yet exhibit chaotic randomness, ensuring the woven patterns never repeat. The piece is part of a rope makers series and took around twelve years to build; the exhibition is free and is the work's only London showing.
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