‘It takes longer than you think’ is an ongoing mixed-media project investigating the multiplicities of temporal experience in expanded and multiple frames.
Drawing on Einstein’s special theory of relativity, black holes, meteorites and event horizons, the project unites sculpture, photography, video, and sound in an immersive experience exploring manifestations of time from the personal to the ecological.
The project commenced with an entanglement in cosmic temporalities, represented through ceramic sculptures. Over an extended period, these works were subjected to various constructive and destructive processes, all of which were documented in the attempt to expose these objects to events that occur across different timescales; events that unfold across days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Human temporal experience, represented in the labour of creating these forms, was frozen in an event horizon of its own as the forms were photographed at the point of destruction.
‘It takes longer than you think’ is a material investigation of time; an exploration of how to apprehend the expansive temporal frames of the geologic and cosmic and their complex entanglement with human temporal experience. This project emerges from sustained interest in the possibilities of telling time through thing, not thesis; ultimately asking how we might give form to time in shared experience, in a way that overcomes the subjective nature of temporal experience.
Gretel Bull is a mixed-media artist working primarily in photography and sculpture. Her conceptual practice is concerned with exploring the tensions that exist between human and more-than-human subjects, and the scientific and mythological theories that define their relationships. Specifically, how these frameworks shape our physical reality and mediate our place within the larger eco- and cosmic systems.
In 2022, Gretel was awarded an Arts NT Emerging Artist grant to develop her project, ‘Persephone’s Urn’, an ongoing series exploring the role of mythology in ecological care. Works from this project were shortlisted in both The Alice Prize (2022) and the National Emerging Artist Prize (NEAP, 2022).
In 2024, one of Gretel’s works ‘Time-like infinity’, from the ongoing project, ‘It takes longer than you think’, was shortlisted in The Alice Prize. Gretel was also awarded an Arts NT Professional Development grant for a collaborative project with Canberra-based artist Bec Selleck (2024-25).
Gretel’s works currently feature in the nationally touring exhibition, ‘Clay on Country: Ceramics from the Central Desert’ (2024-26, touring ten regional galleries). Her sculpture, ‘The tongue meets the flower and the flower meets the tongue’ was awarded second prize in the Northern Territory Art Prize (2026).
