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Creating something out of nothing
www.peterdcox.me.uk - a onetime Guardian listed weblog
First to Tate Modern to see the latest Turbine Hall installation, and then to see a site specific performance at Marshall Street Baths in Soho.Corridor is the company set up by Geraldine Pilgrim in 2000 following her successful work at St Pancras Station. Here she has involved students from Central School of Speech and Drama and Wimbledon School of Art as well as local people. Her trick is to reveal fragments of the memories of the building using performers, carefully set tableau and the spaces and vistas of the building, sometimes tiny ones, sometimes huge. Just a couple give the flavour of Deep End: the sight and sound of water dripping into a zinc bath at the bottom of a glorious stair well five or six floors down; the closing image of a female swimmer descending the steps into the deep end of the unused First Class Pool. This space has been lit to create the illusions of a filled pool, with images of swimmers, and a lone, immobile spectator.
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And in case you think there might be little technique - art - involved, there is great lighting, prop setting, design and sound - as well as dozens of ghostly actors. In 30 minutes or so it managed, without a word being spoken, to engage thought and emotion at every level and feast the eyes and senses in rich imagery and sounds. Quite a feat. So, quite serendipitously, a day filled with experiences of memories. Who'd have thought you could do that with old cardboard boxes and a derelict Victorian swimming pool.
But of course you can't: it was the art wot did it. by Peter D Cox , Friday December 16th, 2005.
next review...
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