At the hour, from behind blue wooden blinds, woodcut apostles, each having been designed to possess the austere quality of heaven’s judgment, peel away the curtains of sky and clouds at the ringing beckon of Death’s bells calling out to those for whom the bell tolls, only to be refused as the bard, the miser and the mirror holding narcissist are much too involved in their respective vices to pay heed to Death’s invitation, choosing instead to let the running of time be their ruin. Then, the golden rooster crows, marking the retreat of the apostles behind their cover of blue and white symbols and Death’s surrender, commemorating the return from a time granted to divine interference to that of common man subjected to the daily toil.

It is a pragmatic composition of symbols, some abstract, some stark, but most striking is its use of the colour gold. Like the incandescent glory experienced at the sight of the straight cut rays beaming from a blazing sun that sharply penetrate a blinding darkness, this installation of shimmering gilded Roman and Gothic-Bohemian numerals, celestial objects and mythical creatures represent the heightens capacity of the human race gained through the acquisition of knowledge that bequeaths unto us the ability, within this invisible sphere of relativities, to navigate with a keen awareness of our individual mortalities in the unyielding forward march of time.

Of each variation of time told, it is a triumph of man’s ingenuity and ambition over prevailing ignorance, and this clock of multiple dials that has adorned the wall of this tower since 1410, remains a persevering champion of man’s ability to master his existence in relation to the elements that define its limitations.