Scaffolding
Curated by Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo
5 November – 6 December 2026
Draakoni Gallery, Tallinn, EE
What remains of an object when it loses its original purpose? Or when it never had one in the first place?
Opening on 5 November at Draakoni Gallery, Scaffolding brings together a selection of new and recent works by British artist Bob Bicknell-Knight, currently based in Tallinn. At the centre of the exhibition is the artist’s largest, most labour-intensive and technically ambitious sculpture to date, which is still somewhat a work in progress.
There is something strangely familiar about Bicknell-Knight’s sculptures. One might recognise an organ console, a wall clock or a chandelier, yet they could just as easily be architectural models, fragments removed from the façade of an unknown building, or mysterious supporting structures whose actual purpose remains elusive. These are objects that seem to belong somewhere else, although exactly where is difficult to say. Their forms evoke both sacred architecture and industrial structures, a distant, speculative past as much as the future of some dystopian parallel reality.
In Bicknell-Knight’s practice, the virtual and physical worlds intertwine. His works may take their starting point from objects found in video games, or borrowed from their visual language, which in turn imitate elements extracted from the real world. These are objects whose original purpose have been altered or lost entirely within the virtual environment. Clocks that do not tell the time, or objects whose sole reason for existing is to make an imaginary world more believable. Brought out of the virtual realm, they acquire a new physical presence, but not necessarily a clearer meaning. Quite the opposite: familiar forms become even more alien, as though they have passed through several different realities, losing something of their original nature along the way while acquiring something new.
The surfaces of these objects appear to bear the traces of time. In places, they suggest wear and erosion; elsewhere, the gradual accumulation of dust and detritus. Yet it is difficult to tell whether these are traces of a past existence or whether they have been part of the objects from the very moment of their creation. A strange temporal contradiction emerges: objects that may have no actual past appear to originate from a time that has never existed.
Time is a recurring, though not always immediately perceptible, theme in Bicknell-Knight’s work. It manifests itself in stopped clocks, burning candles and the seemingly weathered surfaces of his objects. Equally important are questions of control and functionality. What happens when an object that is supposed to do something no longer does? When a light fixture itself needs to be illuminated, or a clock exists in a world where time does not move?
Scaffolding presents objects whose origins, purposes and place in time remain unresolved. They might be remnants of something long since vanished, fragments of a future yet to come, or perhaps objects from a world that has never existed at all.
Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo
Photos by Paul Kuimet
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“This ambiguity is closely connected to the origins of objects. Bicknell-Knight often approaches video game environments as a kind of archaeologist, searching through worlds populated by objects that exist primarily to make an imaginary reality believable. These may be modelled after real objects, sometimes even scanned from physical reality, yet their original functions have often become secondary or disappeared altogether. Doors that cannot be opened or lead nowhere, windows that offer no view, clocks that do not work, rubbish that cannot be picked up from the ground. Brought back into the physical world, as Bicknell-Knight often does, such objects acquire weight, texture and presence, but not necessarily a clearer purpose.
Yet this movement between realities is rarely a simple act of reproduction. His sculptures are often conceived, constructed and presented as fragments, sometimes connected only through association. Digital forms are printed in separate pieces, assembled and coated with layers of concrete. What emerges is not necessarily a faithful reconstruction of an original object, but an entity assembled from elements that have already passed through several contexts. Each transition adds something while leaving something else behind.“
Excerpt from a short essay for the exhibition written by Võsa-Tangsoo, seen in full below.
INCLUDED ARTWORKS
