Machines to Crystallize Time is a new body of work by CJ Mahony and Georgie Grace created uniquely for Smiths Row. The exhibition brings together their shared interests in temporary states and immersive experiences, which they create via built spaces, through language, and on screen.

The works in the exhibition range from small sculptural objects, large scale structures and lighting interventions to video projection and sound. The changing light throughout the day forms part of the work, shifting the atmosphere in the gallery and inviting us to consider how we experience the flow of time and how we perceive ourselves in space.

CJ Mahony’s structures dissect the gallery to delineate slowly unfolding spaces and sites for interaction with projection. Inspired by photographs of now non-existent Russian Constructivist sculptures of the early twentieth century, she plays with perceptions of scale, manipulating ideas of presence and absence through the interplay between objects and shadows.

Georgie Grace has created a series of new video projections which respond to Mahony’s constructions. Containing textual elements which evoke the marking of time in language, they explore the idea of video as a technology that both interrupts and captures time.

The movement between different points in time and space lies at the centre of both artists’ investigation. Machines to Crystallize Time asks the question of how we might be transported through time using images and language, to experience things that no longer exist or to see reflections of what might exist in the future.