Created over the course of four years, Grains forms an imagined timescape alluding to both the celestial and the cellular. Rooted in the physical, this work is an extension of the artist’s mind and body, a meditation on time and process. Through the gesture of the hand, McVetis seeks order, quietness, and rhythm—a deeply human rhythm that slows one down. This deliberate slowness heightens awareness of the present, teaching patience and focus.

Each stitch marks the rhythm of the hand, a delicate performance of obsessive intricacy. Making becomes a way to explore the subtle variations that emerge through ritualistic, habitual making, a practice of working in and with time. These subtle differences reveal themselves upon close inspection. From a distance, the marks dissolve into fields of binary tone. Through meticulous multiples of dots, time is recorded and spaced mapped.

In quantum physics, time is not continuous but granular; it is smooth and orderly at a large scale, yet chaotic and particulate when examined closely. Carlo Rovelli calls this the “frenzied swarming of quanta.” The marks echo this granularity. Each seeding stitch acts as a comma or full stop, a signifier of lived time.

Stitching becomes a metaphor for human life. The front of the embroidery, curated and precise, reflects the version we present to the world, a map of carefully taken steps and remembered paths. As McVetis makes, he reveals. As he makes, the world fades, replaced by an imagined landscape rendered in thread. In this way, materials become a site of consciousness and being.

Commissioned by 1 Triton Square by British Land and Royal London Asset Management. Curated by New Public in partnership with Cockpit Studios