Welcome to earf.info, an online platform that collects research related to artist Dan Guthrie’s new body of work Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, 2025, commissioned and produced by Spike Island, Bristol and Chisenhale Gallery, London.

Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is an art commission that imagines the future of the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in Guthrie’s hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire. It puts forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock; a theoretical term proposed by Guthrie to describe the act of acquiring an object with the intention of destroying it. The commission will be exhibited at Spike Island, Bristol from 8 February – 11 May 2025, and at Chisenhale Gallery, London from 6 June – 17 August 2025.

This holding page will be updated in January 2025. An interactive timeline will trace the history of the Blackboy Clock alongside wider contested heritage debates in the UK. The site will also host a journal with texts authored by Guthrie and other contributors; access materials and a self-care guide related to the commission; and a list of events programmed alongside each of Guthrie’s exhibitions.

Illustration by Gwyn Willey, in Ramon R. Willey’s The Black Boy School, Stroud 1844–1914, 1970. Edited by Dan Guthrie, 2024.