Artist: Giles Thackway

The exhibition presents a series of photo-sculptural works documenting traces of petroleum on asphalt, captured by the artist over several years across different cities. Framed within warped glass—an amorphous material that can shift between liquid and solid states—Thackway’s images transform oil slicks into luminous, moving forms. These fuel blooms recall the astrophotographs of dying stars or the gleam of gemstones, situating surface beauty as an everyday trace of the violence of oil extraction and its environmental and geopolitical consequences. In this exchange, the iridescent slick traces the silhouette of a contemporary libation, where the volatility of depletion activates a sudden, charged resonance.

Invitation to contribute. Mr GILES THACKWAY.

Dear Mr THACKWAY,

My name is Dr Stephan Vliperdius, I am a partner and senior researcher at The International Institute of Time, Frequency and Cognition, a developmental research laboratory based in Corripo, Switzerland.It is my pleasure to contact you with an urgent invitation, even though it may surprise you to receive this unsolicited communication with me since there has been no previous correspondence between us. Tell me Mr THACKWAY do you reject the theory of the absolute present? Do you recognise that in addition to linear time, there are other orders of time, second, third, fourth and so on?

We have recently made great strides in our work on pre-cognition and oneirocritic transcription, and to bring this project to its next stage of development requires outreach to individuals of specific experience and psychic-haptic sensitivity such as yourself. While we must not state exactly how, or by what method, your name has been presented to us as a potential participant and collaborator, please know that you are at the very top of a short and highly selective list.

Mr THACKWAY, we are at a critical juncture. We have what we believe to be definitive scientific proof that the restrictions of the so-called Fourth Dimension are not only malleable, but that under the right conditions and through our trademark crystal chain process, might be transposed and therefore navigated at will.

Mr THACKWAY are you a multilayered observer, capable of slipping between the bars of your physical body? Mr THACKWAY are you willing to confront the dangers of infinite regression? To risk playing out the same moments over and over again if you fail to capture the moment within the moment?

Mr THACKWAY can you feel the velocity of life increasing? Can you feel the ground shiver and quake, the sidewalk vibrating so quickly that it grows soft like sand, dragging at your heels?

Our feeling is yes, Mr THACKWAY, you are all of this and much more. At the institute we are assembling individuals like yourself to join our quest to break out from the enclosures inherited from redundant dimensional doctrines.

I have said as much as I am capable and I am sure you have many questions, all of which I will be willing to answer, preferably over video chat. I am available to you 24/7 over WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat. Our specific address, you must understand, cannot be disclosed. Please see the attached term sheet for information about scheduling, fees and accommodation. After a written commitment, and an initial wire transfer of £36,000, we will begin to onboard you into the programme.

Sincerely,
Dr Vliperdius