Seizure and the Turner

by ruth barker, 29 Apr 2009

Hello,
So the Turner Prize is upon us once again, with this year’s shortlist announced yesterday: Lucy Skaer, Roger Hiorns, Richard Wright and Enrico David.
I guess I found the selection this time to be quite interesting with one artist in particular – Roger Hiorns – shortlisted specifically for a recent public work: Seizure was developed last year for a site in South London.

See images of all the artists’ work in The Guardian here.

The BBC reported the shortlist here.

I’ve put my own images of Seizure here.

Seizure was commissioned by Artangel, the public art commissioning heavyweights who’ve been instrumental in a number of high profile British works in recent years (see list below). Unusually for a commissioning body, Artangel works by identifying a particular artist (or filmmaker, or writer, or composer, or choreographer or performer), who is then supported to develop their work for a specific, often public, context. As an organisation, Artangel are known for enabling artists to make work that otherwise simply couldn’t or wouldn’t happen. Perhaps because of their commitedly artist-centered approach, they’ve been able to time and again commission works that are ambitious, important, and landscape-changing within the public realm. They’ve been doing this pretty consistently since the early 1990’s, and I figure they’ve been a massively important part of shaping the awareness of the possibilities offered by contemporary practice in the public realm.

So, knowing Artangel’s impressive reputation I went down to London last year to see Seizure, which was then their latest commission. This was Hiorns’ first commission on a large scale and (as far as I know) his first urban, public, installation. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the piece, but I did know that the artist had been working with an empty group of maisonette flats in the South of the city, which had previously been part of an inner city housing estate. The flats had been vacated and were scheduled for demolition until Artangel negotiated temporary access to the site. I think the buildings have now been flattened.

When I arrived at the site on Harpur Road, it was busy with people. In a small sunny courtyard area between the derelict buildings, there were queues of people wearing sturdy black wellies, waiting to enter the flat and see the work itself.

Only a few visitors at a time were allowed in to see Hiorns’ startling chemical intervention. The artist and his team of technicians had sealed the entire lower flat and filled it to the brim with liquid copper sulphate solution. Crystals were allowed to form, the liquid was removed, and the former bedsit (now sculptural totem), was allowed to air. The result was literally transformative. The deep blue, almost luminous, crystals coated every interior surface with a thick carpet of intense geometric colour. Floors, walls, ceilings, as wlel as light fixings and a bath were encased in this new and brittle blue skin.

The domestic space was rendered entirely new through this chemical metamorphosis into a poetic re-imagining. The effect on the people who saw it was no less dramatic. I saw people laugh, cry out, touch the walls in disbelief and, above all, steal. Wearing Artangel-provided rubber gloves (like the wellies, these were compulsary for all visitors), people actually pulled crystals off the walls and hid them in their pockets. People really desired the work in a ‘gingerbread cottage’ kind of way. They wanted it for themselves, but it was as if they couldn’t help it. It reminded me of those who rip bluebells in armfuls from bluebell woods, and then take them home to die. It seemed as though visitors compulsively wanted to keep a fragment for themselves, even though to try and posses the space as a whole through the tiny individual parts that made up its shining carapace, was nonsensical.

The poetry of this condemned and lonely flat suddenly becoming so luxurious, magical, and desired, was potent. It’s a work I’m glad I’ve seen, and I’m interested to see the kind of public response that Turner nomination will bring. Likewise with fellow nominees Richard Wright – another artist specialising in the site specific – and Lucy Skaer, whose work with Henry VIII’s Wives (as well as her public interventions) has also both entered and investigated the public realm.

A jolly good showing then, not just for public art (three out of four shortlisted artists making site-specific non-gallery works is pretty unusual) but for Scotland as well: Richard Wright studied in Edinburgh and now lives in Glasgow, Lucy Skaer studied and lives in Glasgow. Hooray! The odd one out has to be Enrico David by that count, but I’m sure he’ll get over it.

More Later,
R

A few past Artangel projects whose names you’ll probably recognise:

Catherine Yass: High Wire

Mathew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle

Rachel Whiteread: House

Michael Landy: Breakdown

Jeremy Deller: The Battle Of Orgreave

Juan Munoz / Gavin Bryars: Man in a Room Gambling