What if the most valuable thing time gives us is each other?
For anyone who has ever wished a moment could last a little longer, Our Time will probably feel familiar.
Two figures lean into one another, almost disappearing beneath hundreds of moments already lived.
Everywhere you look, there is another watch.
Some elegant. Some battered. Some brightly coloured. Some stopped years ago.
Remarkably, a few still tick.
Our Time is an award-winning New Zealand contemporary sculpture about something none of us can hold onto, no matter how hard we try: time.
The watches began arriving during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were old, broken and no longer wanted for their original purpose, but people didn't want to throw them away. Instead, they gifted them to me.
Over approximately eighteen months, those individual contributions gradually became something much larger.
 
Materials
Gifted old and broken watches, watch faces, straps, chains, metal and mixed media assembled over a sculptural form.
 
Dimensions
Height: 69 cm
Width: 39 cm
Depth: 55cm
 
Series
Circular Elevation / Sculptural Works
Artist
Lisa Watkins | MyShinyMadness
Auckland, New Zealand
Presentation
Our Time is a freestanding, one-of-one sculptural work, personally constructed and finished by Lisa Watkins. Every surface has been considered because craftsmanship shouldn't stop where the obvious viewing angle ends.
Presented on its integrated black base and created as a complete collector object.
Perfect Placement
This is an anchor piece, not background decoration.
Our Time would hold its own beautifully in an architectural home, contemporary living room, entrance gallery, private art collection, executive office, design-led workplace, boutique hotel or hospitality interior.
Its metallic surfaces work particularly well against dark timber, concrete, stone and restrained neutral interiors, while the unexpected flashes of pink, blue, red and turquoise prevent it from becoming visually severe.
Placed where people can move around it, Our Time becomes far more than a static object. Different watches, reflections and details appear from every side, making it especially suited to interiors where art is expected to create conversation.
For collectors of contemporary New Zealand sculpture, assemblage and materially complex art, it offers strong physical presence without requiring monumental floor space.
 
Collector Information
Original: One-of-one sculpture
Artist: Lisa Watkins
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Status: Available
Price: NZ$9,500
Certificate: Certificate of Authenticity included
Provenance: First award-winning sculpture by Lisa Watkins
Creation period: Approximately eighteen months
Materials provenance: Watches gifted by community members during the COVID-19 pandemic
International collectors are welcome. Secure payment, custom crating and insured international shipping can be arranged directly.
 
This is a unique original artwork. No edition will be produced.
 
For collectors outside New Zealand, secure crating and insured international freight can be arranged. Because of the density and complexity of the sculpture, I would crate this rather than box it.
 
A couple embracing.
That matters to me.
At a time when so many of us were separated from people we loved, hundreds of objects designed to measure time were brought together to create an artwork about spending it with each other.
Each watch carries an unknown life before it reached my studio. Birthdays. Workdays. First dates. Long days. Ordinary Tuesdays. Perhaps someone checked one while waiting for a child to be born, rushing for a flight, sitting through a meeting, or wondering when someone they loved would finally come home.
I'll never know.
And perhaps that's what makes them so powerful.
Together, they become an extraordinary accumulation of human time.
There is enormous detail in Our Time, but from across a room the watches disappear and the embrace takes over. Move closer and the sculpture changes completely. Faces, straps, chains, colours and tiny mechanisms emerge one after another.
It isn't an artwork that gives everything away immediately.
The longer you live with it, the more there is to find.
And every so often, somewhere among all those silent watches, one is still quietly ticking.
For me, that tiny sound changes the whole sculpture.
Time hasn't stopped.
It never does.
But the people we spend it with, the memories we build and the moments we manage to hold onto become part of who we are.
Our Time was my first award-winning sculpture, making it an important work within the development of my practice and one I will always feel deeply connected to.
Created through my process of Circular Elevation, it reflects the idea at the heart of MyShinyMadness: that worth often exists where we've stopped looking for it.
But ultimately this isn't really a sculpture about watches.
It's about us.
And the extraordinary privilege of having time together at all.