Camden Arts Projects presents Ryan Gander: I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire

Curated by Hala Matar

Opening reception: 13 October, 6–9pm

Booking is not required for this exhibition
 

Time and value are at once fleeting, elastic, distracting, and inevitable, and form the central subject of Ryan Gander’s latest exhibition, I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire. Referencing humanity’s ongoing obsession with the accumulation of “stuff”, the exhibition brings together new and recent sculptures, animatronics, and installations, exploring how we perceive, distort, and inhabit time and how imagination can transform our relationship to it.

“The artworks remind us that we are in charge of our own destiny, our agency and our time—factors that are more important than the things that are dictated to us by society and tradition,” Gander notes. “The power is in your imagination, and you have the power to change your perception.”

At the centre of the exhibition is The Storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing (2025), in which an animatronic harvest mouse emerges from a hole in the wall to deliver a philosophical monologue in the voice of the artist’s daughter. Reflecting on identity, commodification, and possibility, the mouse becomes the conscience of the exhibition, whispering to visitors about uncertainty and that imagination needs to be seen as an essential resource.

Elsewhere, the perception of time and value falters and fragments. In the courtyard, a monumental black sphere asks Why am I so distracted? (2025), perhaps invisible to passersby scrolling on their phones. In Everything is Titled, a mosquito twitches endlessly on a cake stand, suspended in the moment between life and death. Questions of value and exchange are addressed in Equivalent Economies and Equivalent Means (2018), a vending machine that once dispensed either a bundle of €100 notes totalling €10,000 or rounded stones collected by Gander and his children from a beach near their home. Presented with equal price tags until anti-money-laundering laws intervened, the work undermines systems of measurement and worth, asking how time, value, and memory become entangled. The Graphite-cast Bit Part Player (Balthazar, Merchant of Venice; Act 3, Scene 4) (2020) leans against the gallery walls, recalling the building’s former life as a drama school, where young actors waited endlessly in the wings for their fleeting lines.

The balcony becomes a quiet reflective space where Chronos Kairos, 01.01 (2025), a doubled off-set wall clock, glitches between two realities. Nearby, two stray cats, Charlie (2020) and Smoky (2020), are found asleep on the floor—squatters finding their way into the institution, oblivious to what’s going on around them and the purpose of the surrounding visitors.

Taken together, these works create an exhibition that invites visitors to reflect on distraction, mortality, value, and above all, the imaginative potential of time itself.

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Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander has established an international reputation through artworks that materialise in many different forms – from sculpture to film, writing, graphic design, installation, performance and more besides. Through associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the esoteric, the overlooked and the commonplace, Gander’s work involves a questioning of language and knowledge, as well as a reinvention of both the modes of appearance and the creation of an artwork.
His work can be reminiscent of a puzzle, or a network with multiple connections and the fragments of an embedded story. It is ultimately a huge set of hidden clues to be deciphered, encouraging viewers to make their own associations and invent their own narrative in order to unravel the complexities staged by the artist.

Ryan Gander RA OBE (born 1976, Chester, UK) lives and works in Suffolk and London. He studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, Netherlands. The artist has been a Professor of Visual Art at the University of Huddersfield and holds an honorary Doctor of the Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Suffolk. In 2017 he was awarded an OBE for services to contemporary art. In 2019 he was awarded the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. In 2022, he was made RA for the category of Sculpture.

Opening reception: 29th January, 6 - 9pm

“The question that has pervaded my work for four decades now is the following: can I use the idea of the sculptural to process everyday life and our time and to gain a new perspective or a new possibility for interpretation?”
—Erwin Wurm

Perhaps the best way to approach the main concept behind Erwin Wurm's career is to ask ourselves what he means by "the idea of ​​sculptural." Is the “sculptural” intrinsically linked to concepts such as stillness, volume, and time? Undoubtedly, the Austrian artist's internationally renowned career suggests otherwise. In One Day Yes / One Day No, Erwin Wurm invites us to question our own preconceived perspective through new and recent work. With his unmistakable and paradoxical approach to our contemporary society, he gives us the opportunity to perceive reality in a different way. Perhaps even to "sculpt" time and our collective memory of everyday life with a new gaze.

In this exhibition, One Minute Sculptures—located on the gallery's mezzanine—operates as the conceptual pillar. In this piece, Erwin Wurm “uses simple props and instructions inviting the public to hold specific positions for one-minute. Often placed in an awkward or paradoxical relationship to the presented objects, the participating viewer becomes part of the sculpture for an ephemeral time.” Though it is not necessary to adhere strictly to the time span of a minute, it is merely a time frame for a ‘short time’. When participating in One Minute Sculptures, we become active subjects who are part of the exhibition, and therefore, we develop the opportunity to embody Erwin’s idea of sculpture.

In the main gallery, ten majestic plants dressed in secondhand clothing compose One Day Yes / One Day No. Inspired by the Taipei in One Minute exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2020, these anthropomorphic sculptures will share a slow choreography in search of the natural light filtered through the second-floor windows. Due to the nature of the medium chosen in these sculptures —plants: living organisms, yet to the human eye they appear as static, unmoving —leads us to examine not only the intrinsic relationship between the concept of time and change, but also all the contextual factors that allow, and sometimes even drive, such change. Our interactions, body temperature, breathing, paths, and movements throughout the gallery will cause a change in the behaviour of the plants, just as their individual, compelling need to reach for the light does. Once again, Wurm's work blurs the line between spectator and participant, underscoring the importance that society and the collective exert on the individual.

In the courtyard, gigantic and erected like a pole is Cucumber (2020). Without a doubt, pickles (as well as sausages) have become the most repeated symbol throughout the artist's remarkable career. Even used as a sign of identity or as the artist's signature, Wurm is fully aware of the connotations of these sculptures (often enlarged scales, grotesque positions or absurd contexts). In Wurm’s words: “Rather like potatoes, cucumbers are an age-old non-shape. There are millions of different cucumbers. No cucumber is the same as the next, rather like people. That appeals me a great deal.” Certainly, this nearly 3-meter-tall sculpture, visible from the streets near the gallery, sets the tone and the starting point for the exhibition.

If, as he says, “Sculpture is everything”, delving into One Day Yes / One Day No results in the exhibition “sculpturing” us as both observers and participants, both figuratively and physically. In this ephemeral instant, Wurm’s work allows us to reflect on our own participation and interpretation of everything that surrounds us.

Erwin Wurn's Biography:

Erwin Wurm (b. 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria) graduated from University of Graz, Austria, in 1977, and University of Applied Art and Academy of Fine Art, Vienna in 1982. lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. Over the course of his career, Erwin Wurm has radically expanded conceptions of sculpture, questioning its notions of time, mass and surface, abstraction and representation. Erwin Wurm came to prominence with his One Minute Sculptures, began in 1996/1997. In these works, Wurm gives instructions to participants that indicate actions or poses to perform with everyday objects such as chairs, buckets, fruit or sweaters. These sculptures are by nature ephemeral and by incorporating photography and performance into the process Wurm challenges the formal qualities of the medium as well as the boundaries between performance and daily life, spectator and participant.

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