Seizure

I brought Bob down to a derelict housing estate in south London today:

He gave me a bit of a look when I said that we would have to take off our shoes when we got there, but miraculously didn't laugh and run away when I told him the absurd-sounding plan.

Even I was surprised, since I didn't know we'd have to put on gloves as well. Anyway, here's Bob in his wellies and gloves--the gloves match his shirt quite nicely, don't you think?

Perhaps by now you're as curious as Bob was to find out why we needed this special gear. Well, follow us into this abandoned flat and I'll explain:

We were here to visit Roger Hiorns's rather spectacular installation, created in one of the flats within this block slated for demolition. Seizure is a sculpture over which the sculptor had very little actual control, and that's definitely part of the point. One of the pamphlets we were handed when we changed our footwear outlines the incredible process of creating the installation, which I think is worth reading to fully appreciate the result: ". . . Flat 159 [was transformed] into a completely watertight tank, reinforced by steelwork on the outside, with its upper surface open and accessible--through holes punched through the ceiling--to the flat above. . . . More than 70,000 litres of [hot super-saturated copper sulphate] solution . . . was eventually pumped into Flat 159, to fill it to the brim. With an initial temperature of around 60 degrees centigrade, two and a half weeks were needed for the temperature of the solution to drop significantly, and for the 'cooling crystallisation' to take place, during which time it was left untouched. When the temperature reached roughly 30 degrees, the flat was drained of its liquid contents and the opening of the resulting cave-like rooms took place. The tank was breached through the hole that connects the adjacent flat to its crystallised neighbour and which visitors to the work now use as an entrance." The end result resembles the interior design of a chemist gone mad, with piercing (in colour and texture) crystals clamouring over the surfaces of what was once living space, and a floor scarred by sunken footprints made by the first people who entered the flat when it was still warm and oozing with leftover liquid.

Once our eyes adjusted to the landscape of blue,

the walls seemed to dance as the crystals reflected what little light there was in the flat.

The ceiling light fixtures

and the bathtub

provided the most contrast, although one of the men at the door told us that the bathtub was really amazing last week when there was still a pool of liquid in it, reflecting the crystals that had formed around it. I gently ran my gloved hand across a wall of crystals

and took a closer look at their beautiful patterns

before we left the blue world and returned to what now seemed like an extremely muted palette of colours outside. By sheer coincidence, as we walked toward our bus home, I spotted this rather fitting--in colour at least--sight on the side of an otherwise dull office building on Borough High Street:

With no relation to the Blue Man Group, the sculptures were apparently just placed there by the building's owner in an attempt to make the building "look better." Well, they certainly don't make the building look worse!