TLC is nearly 21 years old.

It seems like a long time, but time is relative.  My favourite way of looking at it is a line which says ‘Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.’

Robert Genn, in his wonderful newsletter, talks about doing art work within the time of an old hour glass, which happens to take 37 minutes.  His students achieve exciting results within the shortened hour.

Einstein figured that time is bendy and it behaves differently according to your own situation.  If you’re motoring along at the speed of light then time stops, or so the theory predicts.  Subjectively time feels different depending on whether you’re enjoying what you’re doing.   When you’re with someone you love, or you’re immersed in making art, time seems to disappear.  On the other hand if you’re having root-canal surgery or you’re stuck in an extremely dull lecture, time goes very slowly.

Time Flies when you're having fun (a quarter of a second in the lives of insects flying around a bright light). Photograph By Jonathan Milne

Many cultures have the view that time goes around in circles.  The movie Ground Hog Day reduced these circles to the length of a single day, but in Hindu philosophy the cycles are millions of years long.

Fashions in art can be close to Ground Hog Day.  They go round and round fairly quickly.  The Pre-Raphaelites were revolutionary in their day.  Then the Impressionists were revolutionary.  And since then the revolutions have occurred more and more quickly until now we have a sort of continuous revolution, which is what Chairman Mao said he wanted.  But revolution has turned into a fashion.  It feels compulsory to do something new and provocative every year, regardless of whether there’s any point to it.

When I look at TLC art I see something a little different.  We see a continuing line of engaging work.  But curiously it has never been preoccupied with fashion.  Our staff and students have been engaged with a process of discovery.  TLC art shows are about exploration.

From a human point of view exploration is timeless.  It makes no difference whether we’re 21 years or 21 decades.  Malcolm Gladwell argues in ‘Blink’ that much of our most useful experience is instantaneous.  Is the history of an artist (or an organisation) the story of a number of critical instants.

I think life is a conversation (and ‘history’ consists of those things from the past which we decide to make relevant in the present) .  We do things, the world responds and we in turn respond again.  Some of the conversations turn out to last longer and maybe fly higher.  Others fall flat, or maybe need to be tried again in different circumstances.

The whole point about TLC is that it is a conversation.  We’re people engaging with people and exploring things that matter.  TLC staff and students are explorers, forever testing the boundaries in new ways.  When you’re at a show or viewing TLC work on line, you’re talking with explorers.  Welcome to a timeless conversation.