dyed wool, stainless steel, mechanical system
12m x 12 m x 10 m

The Nervous System (Umbilical), 2025 is part of the ‘Rope Makers’ series by Conrad Shawcross and is the artist’s most ambitious rope machine to date. At 10m high, and spanning 12m in diameter the work is monumental in both its scale and complexity. Born of a late-night conversation over ten years ago with David Walsh, the visionary behind MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Tasmania, the machine’s 40 interlocking arms will incrementally weave a rope in a sequence of orbits that will never repeat.

Meticulously engineered and built in his studio in Hackney, the work represents an extraordinary achievement of art and mechanics, speculative calculation and thought, combining scientific and conceptual rigor. The work is analogous to our own solar system: the rotating spools seek to correspond to the aberration of planets orbiting around our sun within a galaxy which over millennia is flattening and expanding as it spins. The rope pulling through the centre recalls the sun’s journey through the galaxy, travelling at an incomprehensible speed, with its accompanying planets and 891 moons on their helical paths.