Tucked away about 5 minutes from the dilapidated 70s mall charm of Elephant and Castle, past that partially boarded up estate at the west end of New Kent Road, and a pub which claims to be the 'only English owned pub left on Harper Road', you may be convinced you've slipped into some gritty Channel 4 drama, with huge queues outside a run down block surrounded by neo-brutalist council estates, when you arrive at this installation.
But unless this drama also includes queues of a decidedly middle class mixture of artists and art aficionados, with attendant children, and an installation commissioned by Artangel (the people who also commissioned the inside out house by, the unlikely to appear on the Jonathan Ross Show (probably), Rachael Whiteread), and the Jerwood Foundation, you are going to have to dispel this idea pretty quickly.
After ditching your shoes and waiting for someone to come along to put back the right size gumboots for you to borrow (if you do have gumboots, then bring 'em). You enter the main event, so to speak. A council flat which was sealed and then immersed in hot copper sulphate solution. Resulting in all surfaces being covered in growths of blue crystal. Well ok, almost everything, a bath sticks out like the bones of a long dead animal in the desert from a panning shot in a '50s Western. It is quite a visual feast, the entirety of this once ordinary space converted to sparkling crystalline shades of blue, with the odd green appearing on the waterlogged floor.
We have to warn you, the queues may well be very long, but they'll be worth it.
By Oliver Gili
Seizure is at 151 – 189 Harper Road, London SE1. It's only on until Sunday 30 November and only open Thursday to Sunday, 11.00-17.00 so clear your diary now and go.
Image by Nick Cobbing courtesy of Artangel.
