Grace Weir Time Tries All Things 2019 Video still featuring Grace Weir© Grace Weir and Courtesy the artist and Institute of Physics
Time Tries All Things by Irish artist and filmmaker Grace Weir is the inaugural show in the Gallery at the Institute of Physics, a new £30M building in the heart of London’s Kings Cross. Weir’s immersive two-screen video installation is a poetic and lyrical meditation on different conceptions of time; scientific philosophical and cinematic. It has been developed from her collaboration with two renowned theoretical physicists, Professor David Berman of Queen Mary University of London and Professor Fay Dowker of Imperial College London.
Grace Weir Time Tries All Things2019Video still featuring Seamus Dunbar © Grace Weirand Courtesy the artist and Institute of Physics
Time Tries All Things invites viewers to reflect on their own lived experience of time and how it can be illuminated by scientific knowledge and theory. The profound and complex question of how we understand time has exercised scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists since the earliest civilisations, from Galileo to Stephen Hawking. The questions with which they have grappled are formidable: How do we measure time? Is it absolute or relative? Does it flow, moving forwards from a fixed, known past towards an unfixed, unknown future? Is time finite? Does it have a beginning, an end, or both? Is time an illusion? Is the past real? Does the future exist already? Weir explores these questions through her 30-minute work, featuring Professor Dowker and Professor Berman, reflecting on their own theoretical perspectives on time.
Grace Weir Time Tries All Things 2019 Video still featuring Seamus Dunbar © Grace Weir and Courtesy the artist and Institute of Physics
“Time is intrinsic to both physics and film-making. How can we align the extraordinary theoretical concepts of time within physics with our everyday experiences of time and its representations? ‘Time Tries All Things’positions two differing concepts of time in a filmic portrayal of two physicists’ viewpoints, through the unfolding of a moment when a photograph is taken of a 19th century stone plaque. Carved with the words ‘Time trieth troth’, the moment opens into a consideration of the elasticity of the present instant and the flux of history.”
-Grace Weir
Grace Weir Time Tries All Things 2019 Video still © Grace Weir and Courtesy the artist and Institute of Physics
‘Time Tries All Things’ a new video installation by Grace Weir at the Institute of Physics, 37 Caledonian Road, London, N1 The exhibition is free and is open to the public from Monday 21st January –29th March 2019 Press View: 9-11am, Thursday 17th January www.iop.org
About The Artist
Grace Weir Born in Dublin Ireland in 1962, Grace Weir works primarily in the moving image and installation. Her work explores the dynamic of practice and representation at the levels where issues of identity and temporality coincide. Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She was recently Artist-in-Residence in the School Of Physics, Trinity College Dublin and had a solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Artin 2015-2016. More at www.graceweir.comAbout the new Institute of Physics (IOP) building, opening in January 2019 Located in King’s Cross, London’s international transport hub and home to the Knowledge Quarter, the new glass fronted, purpose-built permanent home for physics has been designed by Tate Hindle and represents a cultural shift towards visibility and inclusivity.
About the Gallery at the Institute of Physics
The new Gallery at the IOP is a space for people to explore their relationship with physics. Through creative commissions, exhibitions and events, the Gallery will host a rich programme that will spark the imagination, debate the big issues facing society and find new ways to connect people with physics. The Gallery will host a rolling programme of activities –two high profile shows a year, and a wide range of pop-up exhibits which will include opportunities for hands-on experiences with physics.
Grace Weir Time Tries All Things 2019 Video still © Grace Weir and Courtesy the artist and Institute of Physics
