William Cobbing x Selfridges | Janus Seasons
William Cobbing has been commissioned by The Art Block at Selfridges, London, to create a monumental sculptural installation which is now on view until October 2025. This marks the eighth in a series of works for the Art Block, where commissions by artists including Melaine Brimfield, Gray Wielebinski, Holly Hendry, Matthew Darbyshire, Andrew Logan and William Darrell have previously been exhibited.
Titled Janus Seasons, Cobbing's commission for Selfridges responds to the theme of wisdom as a remedy for uncertainty. A thematic born from a collective yearning "for something deeper, something richer. A desire for sense and order, a pursuit for knowledge, depth and greater understanding… A desire to be in the moment and not four places at once. A desire to be together in person (not on a screen)… A desire to seek wisdom."
Janus Seasons is an installation composed of three pieces. Sitting on the monolith at the centre is Eye Spy. Inspired by the two-faced sculpture Janus Bifrons from the Vatican Museum, Janus (for whom the month January is named) is the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. One side of the work faces the Duke Street entrance with a video screen, tiled slightly downward, playing a loop of videos created by Cobbing to draw attention to people entering the store. The opposite face is mirrored, reflecting the customers. Flow in the right window vitrine is created with two earthy columns, with arms that embrace each other and caress a TV screen embedded in their heads. This sculpture is about being together physically and a reflection on losing one’s identity, blurring the boundaries of each other. To the left, Cloud Busters, a hybrid body merging into a cloud-like mass with four arms probing another TV screen playing a video of clear blue skies, bruise-coloured storm clouds and murmurations, shows the transitional phases of dawn and dusk. Created to reflect on our detachment from nature, reflecting the ideas of posthumanism, which reconsiders our entitled sense of place at the top of the evolutionary pile.
Over the past decade, William Cobbing (b. 1974, London) has gained international recognition for his pioneering work which brings together performance, sculpture, video and digital art. He has exhibited in museums worldwide including with the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hayward Gallery, London; Tate Liverpool; Camden Arts Centre, London; Freud Museum, London; Studio Voltaire, London; MIMA, Middlesbrough; The Issey Miyake Foundation, Tokyo; NOMAS Foundation, Rome; TENT, Rotterdam; Gemeentemuseum The Hague; Keramiek Museum Princessehof, The Netherlands. His work is held in international collections including the Arts Council England; Wellcome Trust, London; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University; NOMAS Foundation, Rome; MONA Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania.