Laura Gascoigne

As seductive as Chagall: Sarah Sze’s The Waiting Room reviewed

Plus: the artist who transformed a gallery into an airport

‘Metronome’, 2023, by Sarah Sze, in Peckham Rye station. © sarah sze Courtesy the Artist. Photo_Thierry Bal 
issue 27 May 2023

Exiting Peckham Rye station, you’re not aware of it, but standing on the platform you can see a mansard roof with ornamental railings silhouetted against the sky like a French chateau. Designed in the 1860s by Charles Henry Driver, architect of Sao Paolo’s Estacao da Luz, it once covered a vaulted waiting room which, after an intermediate existence as a billiard hall, was closed to the public in 1962. In short, it is just the sort of hidden space to tickle the fancies of impresarios-at-large Artangel, who have made it the site of the first UK installation by American artist Sarah Sze.

The swirling colours are as seductive as a Chagall stained-glass window but more unnerving

It’s not Sze’s first commission for a travel hub: her multimedia sculpture ‘Shorter than the Day’ – a fragile sphere spangled with photographs of the New York sky at different times of day – was installed at LaGuardia airport last year.

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