Tim Etchells: Suddenly (Morning and Night)

Using two linked phrases rendered in glowing white neon letters, Suddenly It Was Morning and Suddenly It Was Night make contradictory assertions about the perceived passage of time, playfully invoking distinct and mutually exclusive narrative scenarios.

It’s a linguistic formulation which might generate multiple possibilities or implicate the viewer in a situation which is not fully revealed: as is often the case in Etchells’ work, the missing parts of the picture are as important as the elements that are present. 

Tim Etchells (b.1962) is a British artist, writer and performance maker with a long history of interdisciplinary practice. His projects range from public-site sculptural installations and gallery works to performances, literary fiction, drawing and video.

Etchells’ neon and LED pieces often draw on his broader fascinations as an artist, writer and performance maker, exploring contradictory aspects of language – the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time its ability to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity.