In a few weeks’ time, a large warehouse in East London will open its doors and reveal a huge moving sculpture within.
This is “Umbilical”, the latest and largest sculpture by London-based artist Conrad Shawcross, and the free exhibition opening in a couple of weeks will be the only time it will be seen in London.
Umbilical is the result of a lifetime’s work experimenting with mobile sculptures, many of which are inspired by the idea of weaving threads and are part of his “rope makers” series. At a glance, it’s obvious what’s going on – a large structure slowly rotating within rotations above your head feeds threads down to a clockwork machine that twists them into a thick rope, which will slowly pile up around the room.
That technical explanation belies something that curiously gets you in the guts when you see it in the flesh, especially the size of the sculpture in the windowless industrial warehouse that houses it.
When you see the moving spools above your head, there’s a sensation of a curious cross between a multicoloured metallic spider and some sort of alien creature trying to pass through a portal into another dimension.
Thin threads descending from the heaven above, grabbed by the machine of man to twist them into a thick cord that slowly extrudes into our plane of existence.
For his part, Shawcross has a fascination with space and how the seemingly random can be ordered and how what looks like ordered celestial physics is actually quite random in nature.
The clockwork spools above the head appear controlled, yet they exhibit a form of chaotic randomness, meaning the patterns in the thread they weave will never repeat themselves. In a way, they reminded me of how the internet security firm Cloudflare uses the randomness of patterns in nature to generate its security keys.
There are numerous calendar time references in the machine – the sculpture took around 12 years to build from the original concept, the spools need refilling once a year, the mechanism needs servicing just once every seven years, and as an artwork, it should last for at least 52 years.
But not in London.
When the exhibition closes in a couple of months’ time, the whole structure will be taken down and shipped to David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, where it will become a permanent addition to the collection.
Over the years, the threads created by the artwork will pile up around it and become a giant softplay area where you can relax and watch the spooling working above your head.
Until then, there’s a one-off chance to see it in London.
The free exhibition will run from 11th September to 2nd November 2025 and will be open daily from 10am to 6pm. The entrance is on the west side of the Here East building, inside the Timber Yard doorway next to the Saint Espresso coffee shop.
It’s a short walk through the Olympic Park, or from Hackney Wick station.
There are also two other works by Conrad Shawcross in the room – one a smaller, earlier work, and one a much larger piece which was designed to weave a thread on one side and unfurl it on the other. It didn’t quite work out as planned, and the artist looks on it as an unrealised dream.
He will also have a new artwork on display at the Science Gallery next to London Bridge when its new exhibition opens in October.
