Cleveland Watkiss
Closing Celebration for A Ripple in Time with artist Gary Stewart
Orleans House Gallery
Twickenham
19 February 2025
A Ripple in Time invites us to reflect on our shared past and contemplate the threads that connect us through the philosophy of Dub. Artist Gary Stewart spent four months researching in the Richmond Borough Art Collection. He describes his archival exploration as an ‘excavation’ intertwining history and modernity.
His research came together at the Orleans House Gallery with remixed sonic elements, original narration, multi-channel video work, vintage objects and artworks from the collection. Like a Dub musician who mixes multiple tracks on a turntable, there are multiple timelines layered together in the space – the history of the British Empire, the history of Western music and the history of sound playback technology. The artist’s practice engages with Dub as a mode of creating, and this layering is Dub in action.
According to Stewart, ‘A lot of my practice is based on establishing the framework of a linear timeline and then mixing it up so that you can create dialogues between different time periods. What would happen if you had someone listening to a cello in the 18th century in the gallery’s Octagon Room having a conversation with somebody today who’s interested in contemporary folk music?’
