In Seven Days, a series of bracelets in collaboration with Louisa Guinness Gallery, Shawcross expands on his Harmonic Series installations in which he explores and visualises the mathematics intrinsic to music. The piece derives from a large mechanical work, Loop System Quintet , created in 2005 for the New Art Gallery, Walsall, which is now in the permanent collection of MONA, Tasmania.
The installation is made up of fve identical, fast-spinning articulated arms of oak. Mounted on the tip of each arm is an electric bulb, and at the base a bevel gear. Each gear is set to a different ratio corresponding to those found within the Western chord sequence: the second, third, fourth, ffth and major sixth.
As each arm rotates, the various ratios of the bevel gears cause the arms to extrude a different path in space. These were originally captured photographically using time lapse and time splicing. These knots of light are known as 'drones’ in music.
Loop System 5:3 Bracelet, 2013, Photographed by Alexander English
In Seven Days, Shawcross extends the range of the piece to represent the entire octave, except unison (1:1). Each chord sequence is rendered in a continuous loop of solid silver. The structure of these shapes becomes more complex until the final piece forms a densely packed circle of undulating metal. Any of the shapes can be taken from their sequence and placed on the wrist. Each loop sits, according to its ratio, in ascending order in a dedicated box. In the lid, adjacent to each loop is the two-dimensional transcription of the same chord created by a pendulum-driven drawing machine.
Because of the title, each piece in Seven Days inevitably becomes associated with the chronology of the weeks, and further exploits the artist’s use of the sequence to create a control.
As Shawcross explains, working at a reduced scale helps guide the design of his jewellery! 'The constraints give me ideas; so making pieces to ft the body gives me constraints, which I enjoyed responding to.’