Morning:
13°c
An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
London faces a wave of bus and Tube strikes that could cause chaos for millions of passengers as unions walkout over pay and conditions
More...
Crystal Method for Roger Hiorns
Evening Standard Last updated at 11:04am on 26.08.08
Chemical brother: Roger Hiorns
Not science: SEIZURE being prepared by assistants inside a derelict flat in Elephant and Castle
Secret nature: the exhibition will be revealed soon
Look here too
Roger Hiorns and I are sitting shivering in a windswept, brutalist concrete courtyard surrounded by a dozen derelict flats with boarded-up doors and windows. “Perfect weather,” he observes. “It would have been a nuisance if it had been sunny this past six weeks! Really a nice cold winter would have done the trick nicely.”
This dewy-faced, 33-year-old Birmingham-born artist rejoices in our miserable summer for a reason: he's created a living crystallised sculpture called SEIZURE, which, literally, needs to cool down before he can even see it, let alone judge its success.
His ambitious project is the latest urban-landscape commission by Artangel and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, in association with the National Lottery, Arts Council England and Channel 4. Rachel Whiteread's House (1993) was one of the earliest. Brian Eno, Antony Gormley and Jeremy Deller have also contributed to the scheme. Hiorns's installation, at Harper Road, SE1, near Elephant and Castle, is between the Lawson and Rockingham estates, scenes of recent teenage knife crime and a murder, that of 15-year-old Lyle Tulloch.
Today the area is quiet. An imam sits meditatively at the entrance of the light-filled mosque. A couple of children play in Newington Gardens, the site of a famous gaol outside which Charles Dickens used to observe the crowds at public executions.
What exactly has Hiorns done? In short, he has filled a bedsitter with 90,000 litres of copper sulphate solution to create a “total crystallisation”. The cerulean-blue liquid has been poured through a hole in the flat above into a huge, specially constructed, sealed tank which occupies the dimensions of the bedsit below. A powdery crystal encrustation is discernible around the only small opening, like phosphorescent sherbet. Only when the ambient temperature is reached — 20C — can the remaining liquid be drained off, a hole knocked through and the work be visible for the first time. A humdrum London dwelling will have metamorphosised into a crystallised grotto in dazzling, glinting blue.
“We'll knock through the old bathroom wall next door,” Hiorns explains, pointing at the entrance to a third flat, which is quickly locked and bolted before I get a chance to glimpse anything.
Until then, everyone has to keep out — but not just to prevent seepage of information. Copper sulphate's most common use is to test for anaemia, but its use as a fungicide is a reminder of its toxicity.
“The piece has an aggressive nature, as the name SEIZURE suggests,” Hiorns says. “It's the idea of a solid mass taking over a space which was once someone's home that I find really appealing. I suppose that comes from some psychological state of my own. That's the only starting place if you're a rationalist, though I don't let it keep biting at my ankle like Richard Dawkins.”
Surprisingly, the exact process of the poisonous liquid turning into crystal doesn't particularly interest Hiorns. “I'm not a scientist. I'm more concerned with starting a natural process which will go on happening by itself. It's never ending. It won't stop, whatever you do.”
Hiorns has a habit of using odd materials, from perfume and soap to his own semen smeared on the glass of spotlights illuminating the Parthenon for the Athens Biennale, much to the disgust of the city's elders.
“But the youth of Athens liked it. They liked the way it subverted the whole ancient museum thing and made the city open to living culture instead of only dead.” How did he harvest the semen? “How do you think?” he says, giggling.
His work, still known mainly to connoisseurs, has been exhibited at Tate Britain (2003), the Milton Keynes Gallery (2006) and the Cubitt Gallery, London (2007). His most visible public sculpture is a long, glass prism outside the Home Office, often seen when they film a politician outside the building on TV.
One of his other sculptures, at Jesus College, Cambridge, must be washed down with Dettol every day according to his instructions. “It appeals to the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) of collectors,” he grins. “All that ritual and fetishism intrigues me.” How does he know they will obey orders? “I don't. There's a similar piece in Los Angeles where they didn't even know what Dettol was. They found the smell most peculiar.”
Hiorns looks like a hybrid of the young Davids Bowie and Hockney, with a Tintin quiff, big designer glasses, drainpipe jeans and neat, clean features. He's not keen to elaborate about his background. After much parrying, he reveals that his father, a lawyer, died after years of illness when Roger was 17. His older brother, Paul, is also an artist.
As a boy, Hiorns had a fascination with disaster movies, such as Barry Hines's Threads (1984), about the effect of a nuclear explosion in the UK. He studied at Goldsmiths, where he did “nothing in particular. There was no structure. It was all very hands-off.” He describes himself as “restless, impatient. I've always had a kind of irritability since childhood. I mean, what does a child growing up in the middle of Birmingham want to do? He wants to leave as fast as possible.”
Where did his Birmingham accent go? “It just went, like getting over a cold.” He now has studio in Deptford, lives in Swiss Cottage and has a domestic life he calls “healthy”. His girlfriend of 15 years, Anastasia Marsh, is an artist.
The reaction of the local tenants' association to the goings-on at 151-189 Harper Road has been quizzical. “They thought the building was a bit of an irritation, they wanted it to go. It was eventually occupied by down and outs, squatters and asylum-seekers. I suppose this project extends its life, so it's a kind of continuing irritation for a while. It's tricky. But some are very interested.”
Asked about his inspirations, Hiorns names Ezra Pound, Benjamin Britten, Jacob Epstein and Joseph Beuys. “That makes me sound old-fashioned — but there's a lot of pop culture in my work, too: Bowie, Joy Division, Pan Sonic, Sunn O))).” He has no time for the generation of artists ahead of him — the former Young British Artists — whom he considers self-obsessed. Tracey Emin's Every One I Ever Slept With is about as far from his own aesthetic as the Earth from Neptune.
“That kind of art is all about disclosure. It's dull, dull, dull. Maybe my generation is reacting against that. I try to keep myself out of my work. SEIZURE is kind of autogenetic — growing by itself. I prefer to distance myself from ideas of posterity, of the longevity of a piece of art. None of that seems healthy. I don't like explaining and being explicit. I don't make art with lots of announcements and whistles and bells.”
As we finish, he pulls the gate behind him. Within an embryo of hoardings, concrete and steel, an art form is growing. “I love the ambiguity of it all, and its secret, silent, aggressive nature. Behind those boarded-up windows, something invasive is happening. A mass is colonising the space.” He grins cheekily and clicks the padlock into place. All will be revealed soon.
SEIZURE will be at 151-189 Harper Road, SE1 from 3 September-2 November. Open Tues-Sun, free.
Reader views (3)
I think Daniel is just a little bit too reactionary. All public money spent on art could arguably be better spent elsewhere. So suspend all spending now I presume? Art can be enjoyable and therapeutic in many subtle ways which is what Daniel is missing. Good luck on your crusade for road builders and leave the appreciation of art to others.
- Ed ,, london england
How laughably hypocritical of a man who thinks his bodily fluids are ‘artistic’ to criticise the previous generation of artists as self-obsessed. He is right, of course, but at the same time it is rather like Robert Mugabe accusing someone of behaving in a dictatorial manner.
- Helen, London, UK
I think it might actually result in something interesting to look at, but if it does it will be entirely due to the natural processes of crystallization rather than from any ‘artistic’ input. Of course the pseud may well claim that this is exactly the point (the artist subverting his own role as creator, as apparently the word ‘subvert’ justifies any form of navel-gazing pointlessness). It neatly sums up the decadence and self-absorption of contemporary society, that such a project receives public/lottery funding in an area in which lawlessness is apparently rampant and stabbings commonplace. Could not the money have been better spent on that issue, or is that just too reactionary of me? It is also laughably hypocritical of a man who thinks his bodily fluids are ‘artistic’ to criticise the previous generation of artists as self-obsessed. He is right, of course, but at the same time it is rather like Robert Mugabe accusing someone of behaving in a dictatorial manner.
Also, if he’s not interested in the science of it, what exactly is his role other than ‘the guy who tells someone else to pour the stuff through the roof’? It’s not even as if they are planning to shine lights on different parts of it or create images out of the play of light and shadow on the crystal facets, or shaping them in any way to be symbolic, representative or the slightest bit meaningful. It’s ultimately about as creative as a bunch of workmen applying tarmac to a driveway, only far less functional.
- Daniel Jupp, Chelmsford, England
