Going with the ice flow

The passage of time is central to much of Darren Almond's work and this is the theme that links his two new films, by far his most impressive and conceptually complete work to date.

Two large screens are situated at either end of the darkened gallery. At the south end is a film of the Antarctic. Ice slabs scud across the screen like timelapse clouds, and it takes a little while to realise the film has, in fact, been inverted.

At the north end is the Arctic: a lone figure is seen pushing through the hostile, night-time terrain. Strapped into an unseen sleigh, from which he is being filmed by the artist with an infra-red camera, there is a startling counterpoise between the still, eerie vastness and the figure's almost heroic, physical exertion.

Most impressive of all is a massive structure that slices the gallery in half and provides the conceptual link to the whole piece. A beautiful metal monolith, it actually turns out to be a seven-metres-by-four pneumatic clock oriented to Greenwich Mean Time.

Each passing minute heralds a sudden jolt of metal flaps as numbers change, while four small monitors, situated east and west, pick up atmospheric static. Emitting a disquieting buzz, the static is transmitted as fuzzy red and blue pixels.

Somehow, this puts you in mind of the ghostly traces of some invisible, but still unspent force. Fisun G¸ner

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