Routine, 2025
Printed ink and acrylic on canvas, pine wood, PLA, concrete, copper bolts, PVA, water, filler, beeswax, candle wicks
105 x 105 x 10 cm
Routine (2025) is part of an ongoing series of works by Bob Bicknell-Knight, collectively titled Altars (2024 – ongoing).
Altars is a series of wall-based paintings embedded within elaborate frames, revolving around time, video game worlds and control.
The altar series is made up of hybrid paintings of clocks from different video games. The works are hybrid paintings, beginning as digital photographs that Bicknell-Knight takes of clocks within different video games. The images are digitally edited before being printed onto canvas, stretched and painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original digital image. The painting method explores the tension between the digital and physical sides of Bicknell-Knight’s practice and is a collaboration between his digital and physical working methods.
The paintings are effectively clocks frozen in time, mimicking how time in video games is often fabricated and stretched, never usually corresponding to time within the physical world. These works are embedded within frames that have been digitally modelled, usually using Google Sketchup, an architectural modelling programme, 3D printed and covered in layers of concrete.
Concrete plays a central role in Bicknell-Knight’s practice, as both a material and a conceptual device. It is used to conceal the origins of his 3D printed works, masking their precision beneath a coarse, industrial surface. In doing so, the work resists immediate legibility, obscuring how it was made and complicating distinctions between digital and the physical space. Concrete introduces weight, permanence and a sense of history to these objects that originate in immaterial, virtual environments, grounding them within a material reality tied to labour, extraction and construction. The frames resemble and reference various elements referencing architecture, timekeeping and subtle religious symbolism tied to faith, power and control.
The shape and overall design of this particular work was inspired by the shape of a UK plug-in timer that Bicknell-Knight’s mother used to use. It enabled the boiler to turn on at the correct time whilst growing up in his childhood home. Several months after moving to Estonia in 2024 Bicknell-Knight bought a new European plug-in timer for the boiler in his flat. The design had changed but the utility of the object had stayed the same.
With that initial inspiration in mind, the artwork transforms into a simple time piece exploring ideas around memory and time. The clock, shown by the three separate candles surrounding the hybrid painting at the centre of the work, depicts the exact time of Bicknell-Knight’s birth, 11:50pm. Other elements reference the design of clocks, cogs and the inner vascular tissue of plants.
Accompanying the frozen clocks are lit candles, transforming the works into working time pieces, being randomly replaced during a given exhibition period. In some cases, instead of live candles, electric candles have been used when exhibiting the works.
Routine includes a clock documented within Face Noir (2013), a point-and-click adventure game set in New York City during the 1930s, deeply entrenched in the atmosphere of the Great Depression, prohibition, and systemic corruption.
Routine has been included in the following exhibitions:
– Invisible Stones, curated by Lilian Hiob-Küttis, Kirke Kangro and Ruth Melioranski. At Telliskivi Green Hall, Tallinn, EE, 11th November – 7th December 2025.
– Walkthrough. At Kuressaare Castle, Saaremaa, EE, 13th July – 4th August 2025.
BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT 