Cevdet Erek

This new sculptural and sonic installation is inspired by the atmosphere, aesthetics and spatial arrangements of football stadia. The structure is made from layers of dense earth blocks, an organic and sustainable building material manufactured here in the UK which uses only clay soil, barley straw and water. A section of blocks has also been stained with pigments, differentiating the ‘away’ side; the smaller area typically allocated to the visiting team’s supporters. The presence of an away stand is also emphasised by an energetic rhythm which pushes back against the intense mass of sound coming from the larger home side. These opposing sonic forces overlap only briefly, as if meeting across the field of play.

Incorporating musical rhythms and architectural features, Read more

Cevdet Erek’s wall-based sculptures which rework the form of classical museum picture frames, are inspired by football stadia layouts, with the smaller ‘away’ stands marked in gold leaf. The artworks related to Istanbul depict two simplified, almost symbolic representations of one of the well-known stadiums in the city, showing how the location and scale of away terraces have shrunk over the years. Alongside, a pair of new frames made for Liverpool Biennial 2025 present stylized layouts of the city’s two rival clubs, Liverpool’s Anfield stadium and Everton’s former Goodison Park, highlighting both their distinct characteristics and similarly reduced away stands.

Across the world, affiliations with football teams are formed for many different reasons – they can be familial, with Read more

Cevdet Erek’s works investigate the rhythms, structures, and forms that guide our perception of space and time. In 2007, Erek produced his first ruler, which begins with the year of his birth and ends at the actual year of its making. Since then, he has continued to make rulers to mark and interpret successive events and relationships. These include temporal units of day, night, week, and year; individual and social turning points; repetitive events like biennials, musical time signatures and historical ruptures such as coups and wars.

‘Father’s Timeline / Babamın Zaman Çizelgesi (2007)’, one of Erek’s first works to deal with the concept of time, explores collective history through critical personal turning points. For LB2025, the artwork has now been Read more