A major new commission for MONA Tasmania, to be unveiled at Here East, London. The Nervous System (Umbilical), 2025 is part of the ‘Rope Makers’ series by Conrad Shawcross and is the artist’s most ambitious rope machine to date.
At 10m high, and spanning 12m in diameter the work is monumental in both its scale and complexity. Born of a late-night conversation over ten years ago with David Walsh, the visionary behind MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Tasmania, the machine’s 40 interlocking arms will incrementally weave a rope in a sequence of orbits that will never repeat.
Meticulously engineered and built in his studio in Hackney, the work represents an extraordinary achievement of art and mechanics, speculative calculation and thought, combining scientific and conceptual rigour. The work is analogous to our own solar system: the rotating spools seek to correspond to the aberration of planets orbiting around our sun within a galaxy which over millennia is flattening and expanding as it spins. The rope pulling through the centre recalls the sun’s journey through the galaxy, travelling at an incomprehensible speed, with its accompanying planets and 891 moons on their helical paths.
While the machine has a reasonably predictable movement and product – an umbilical-like rope – the
asymmetry within the cycles that The Nervous Systems (Umbilical) traces means that it is is also truly
chaotic, a manifestation of randomness in action. The celestial mechanism is fragile and unpredictable;
it conveys the sense of a complex system on the edge of collapse. The piece sets off new associations
with our planet’s climate – the more we understand about it, the more vulnerable we realise it to be.
To illustrate the journey of Conrad’s ‘Rope Makers’ as a series,an investigation which started over 25
years ago during his time at the Slade, the exhibition will feature two other key works: Yarn, 2001, and
Ode to the Difference Engine, 2007. Both constructed in oak, these early rope machines reveal
Conrad’s initial explorations into the perception of time and our reliance on metaphor to describe it.
As works of art, they invite reflection on the mystery of the cosmos; they do not provide answers, but
ask questions and invite wonder.
Following the closure of the exhibition in November, The Nervous Systems (Umbilical) will be crated
and shipped to Hobart, Tasmania, to be installed permanently in its own atrium at The Museum of Old
and New Art from 2027. The work will run continuously, only stopping for a change of its spools once a
year. As the years and decades pass, the coiled pile of rope will grow; every moment in history traceable
to an exact section of the rope. Changes and faults occurring in the elliptic plane of spools above will
manifest in the rope months later. Similarly to a tornado occurring today, which may be the consequence and composite ofcountless activities that occurred decades or even centuries ago, the machine provides a clear expression of the lag between cause and effect, action and consequence. As a model,The Nervous System (Umbilical) offers a visual embodiment of past, present, and future and challenges our assumption that the world and our reality are stable.
Conrad Shawcross Studio, Umbilical: 11th September – 2nd November 2025
Timber Yard Here East (next to V&A Storehouse)
A commission by the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA)
Open to the public (Monday – Sunday 10am-6pm) Talks & events throughout the exhibition.
10th September: General PV
Special thanks to – David Walsh, Olivier Varenne, Here East, TM Lighting, V&A, Structure Workshop, Brier Engineering.
About the artist
Conrad Shawcross RA (b. 1977)
Over almost three decades, Shawcross has paid tribute to some of the great pioneers and analysts, and considered specific moments or figures from the past. Shawcross’ art dons a cloak of rationality in order to conceal its more poetic heart. Interrogating what we take for granted and encouraging us to see beyond the physical and remember how limited our perception envelope really is.
Shawcross has completed numerous monumental public commissions across the world, including Paradigm (2016) outside the Francis Crick Institute in London, the 50 metre tall The Optic Cloak (2016) in Greenwich, the 18-metre tall Exploded Paradigm (2018) inside the atrium of the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia, Schism (2020) at Château La Coste in Provence, France, the 4.5-metre tall Enwrought Light Fracture in honour of the poet W.B. Yeats in Chiswick (2022), and Manifold 5:4 (2023) at the Liverpool Street Entrance to the Elizabeth Line. He has exhibited at institutions across the world, including Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, USA, the National Gallery in London, ARTMIA in Beijing, Château La Coste in France, the Mathematical Institute in Oxford, Glyndebourne Opera House and MICAS in Malta.
