Commissioned to mark the launch of a new identity and renaming of the Roberts Institute of Art (formerly David Roberts Art Foundation), Ryan Gander’s Waiting (An interval by Ryan Gander), 2021, focuses on time. The work, sitting within and disrupting the architecture of a new website, requests time from the audience but also gives time to them. Time being given and taken speaks to the futile attempts by humans to assert their mastery over the world and its ecosystems. Gander offers us a pause for respite and contemplation, so that we can consider our relationship to different temporalities.
To access Gander’s work the audience clicks the pink interval button (and can move it around the site to wherever is most convenient) which opens randomly generated time intervals specifically chosen by the artist. Each pause is adopted from an existing timeframe one may encounter in everyday life, explained in a short and simple poetic description beneath a progress bar. Taking anything from seconds to several millennia, these specific lengths of time range from the mundane to the abstract, such as the average length of a pop song in 2015, the average time spent procrastinating per hour, a lunar cycle or the current lifespan of one of the oldest living trees in the world. The audience can choose to wait until the time is up or break off their interval at a moment of their choosing.
Ryan Gander was invited by RIA because of his longstanding relationship with the organisation, which started with his participation in an exhibition guest curated by Raimundas Malašuskas in 2009. Ryan Gander and Mario Garcia Torres’ collaborative work from that exhibition was acquired by the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.
