3 A.M.: Wonder, Paranoia and the Restless Night

Does 3am represent the current zeitgeist? At this dread hour, there’s doubt that the day will ever come, a sense of reaching the nadir, of being in a dark place. The mind falters and slides. It’s a time for nightmares, ghouls and nocturnal creatures, of loneliness and death. It’s the shadow side of our daylight existence, lawless and demonic. But 3am is also a time for refuge and release, for dreams and adventure, creativity and imagination.

This book accompanies an exhibition of the same name, curated by Angela Kingston, and features work by over 20 contemporary artists who step into the night to create paintings, drawings, videos, photographs and other artworks that reflect this strange, numinous hour, between the last traces of day and the first glimmer of morning. 3am: Wonder, paranoia and the restless night ‘…drips with insomnia. It needs to keep different hours. It is an adolescent running free, a man alone and afraid, a woman gazing at the cosmos, an unexpected coupling, an emboldened fox’.

Edited by Bryan Biggs, the book combines images with texts by writers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Robert Macfarlane, who have conjectured the far night as something extraordinary, and includes a new short story by Ailsa Cox. Artists featured include Francis Alÿs, Jordan Baseman, Sandra Cinto, Dorothy Cross, Nathan Mabry, Paul Rooney, Fred Tomaselli and Tom Wood.

Bryan Biggs has worked at Bluecoat, Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre, for over four decades, curating numerous exhibitions, and live art programmes. In 2017 he directed Bluecoat’s tercentenary year. He writes on contemporary culture and is co-editor, with Julie Sheldon of Art in a City Revisited (Liverpool University Press, 2009) and, with John Belchem, of Liverpool City of Radicals (Liverpool University Press, 2011).