Duncan Campbell: A New No

The final exhibition of GoMA's 30th anniversary programme is an ambitious new commission by Turner Prize winner (2014) Duncan Campbell. A New No will occupy GoMA’s iconic ground floor gallery over the closing months of 2026.

At the centre of A New No is a flip-disc electromagnetic screen, which animates graphic images using techniques from the ‘12 principles of animation’ formulated by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. We see rising and falling graphs, flow charts, hand drawn lines, Soviet cut-out ‘poster’ animation and flashes of moving image film. A single narrator’s voice roams the gallery– a faltering protagonist who tries to understand the screen and their relationship to it. Rather than explaining the animations, the narrator is a counterpoint to the large ‘flip-dot’ electromagnetic screen.

Framed by the opulent neoclassical architecture of the former Royal Exchange, the screen is an opaque, but physical manifestation of the order of things. A version of the flip-dot technology it uses was first installed at the Montreal Stock Exchange to create a simplified picture-story of value as it peaks and troughs over time. The seductive impression of order that this creates - that markets have a vitality or life-force of their own - is a key touchstone for the work.