Charlotte Pratley

An eerie void descended as I neared the site of Roger Hiorns’ Seizure. Dense, grey clouds hung over the concrete landscape, pregnant with snow. Few signs of life adorned the empty streets. Turning the corner into Harper Road,I could see a long queue of people waiting to enter a boarded-up, low-rise housing development in the shadow of a Brutalist tower block. An eclectic mix of people snaked around the crumbling concrete island, reclaimed by straggly plants in the centre of the inward-facing flat complex; a typical post-war development built to shelter its inhabitants from the cement desolation of its own creation by providing a rare glimpse of fauna from its windows. The aged mosaic tiles of faded red and blue seemed oddly ineffective and even the introduction of people into the space failed to warm its atmosphere. There was an overwhelming sense of bleak normality: of everyday life intercepting an uninspiring place, yet the visitors were all coming to experience a hidden wonderment in a setting steeped in personal histories.

Viewers smiled as they left the flat that contained the artwork while we waited in near-zero temperatures. A smug man with Buddy Holly glasses and a trendy moustache returned to his partner ahead of me in the queue, hugging two steaming coffees. “Isn't this good?” he grinned to her. Without the heat of a take-away coffee or decent boots, the cold was almost unbearable but, looking up at the intimidating stack of box-like apartments, a warm yellow winter light unexpectedly illuminated the complex. A small bumper sticker on the door of one of the boarded up bedsits declared, “Jesus died for you so he wouldn't have to be without you.” “No, he didn't,” someone had scrawled underneath it many years ago - a poignant reflection of the potential religious connotations of Hiorns’ “autogenetic [1]” (self-generating) artwork that lay in wait.

Finally I was first in the queue. As I crossed the threshold into the tiny bedsit, it began to snow. Ahead, the grubby living area, removed of its function several years ago, revealed the falsity of Modernist promise; the potential for human beings to be remodelled by its Utopian-dream accommodation – “a vision of humanity expanded and enabled by the advent of the ‘machine age.’ [2]” While the room may once have promised a better life for its inhabitant, it stood as a pitiful reminder of the hierarchical capitalist society we have inherited; a monument to Britain’s single parent and low-income issues.

All this was temporarily forgotten though as a brilliant, glowing blue struck me through an unnaturally placed doorway. In what was once a cramped bathroom, the entrance to a fantastical cavern had been created; the doorway to an otherworldly cave formed, ironically, from a forced natural process. In the adjacent, mirror-image flat, Roger Hiorns had seeded and grown a dense covering of copper sulphate crystals. Every surface glittered with the sharp blue shards, square and smooth-sided in their formation, visually condensing the already uncomfortably small space. 

By turning the flat into a watertight tank and filling it to the brim through holes in the ceiling, Hiorns had created the conditions for a sculpture to grow autonomously in a sealed room, independent of the artist’s influence, creating uncertainty as to its eventual outcome. After nearly two weeks of the heated copper sulphate solution cooling steadily, the flat was drained, leaving a stunning embellishment of Yves Klein Blue crystals choking every surface. Over the course of the work, viewers had crunched the crystalline floor into a lunar surface, adding to the impression that the viewer had entered another world far removed from mundane city life. The cavern could have been hundred of metres into the Earth’s surface; a kitsch entombing geode created from the growth of inorganic material. Fleshy explorers in this angular landscape, I felt as though this was indeed “something bigger than us [3]”; a process that would continue to engorge the space if allowed, swallowing and preserving us in a glassy stasis.

Hiorns’ had originally wanted the crystals to continue their aggressive inward growth, filling the bedsit until no one could enter the space; a malign, inorganic presence that would inhabit the bedsit whilst unknowing neighbours performed their daily rituals around it. An apocalyptic vision overwhelming all traces of human presence, it exists independently of organic life just as naturally occurring fractal systems will continue to form their relentless patterns regardless of organic influences.

In the accompanying book, Hiorns mentions “a spiritual home…to offer a new set of conditions of experience.[4]” It was deeply moving to see a home reduced to its essential matter: a primitive cave but one rendered dysfunctional as a shelter. The site was carefully chosen as one that carried the “stain of life;[5]” its standardised surfaces radiated with the long-gone echo of inhabitance. Memories were almost tangible in the courtyard and flats; the single remaining piece of furniture, a mirrored cabinet in the bathroom that would have reinforced the inhabitant’s physical presence every morning; the wobbly drain cover whose feeling underfoot must have been familiar to many. These details further highlighted the degradation of the estate; a failed Modernist social experiment that is now the epitome of dystopic city planning. These communal living blocks were intended to promote collective action, a community working together towards an improved society, but instead created depressing uniformity and potentially dangerous areas. Contrastingly, in the glorious uniformity of the man-made geode this sense of community was revived; strangers, we staggered over the uneven ground together, marvelling to each other at the feat of engineering and the overwhelming power of natural processes. A friend had asked if I could steal a piece of crystal for him but I had too much respect for the work to break off a piece of perfectly formed blue glass. On reading the book, however, I realised that the bath peeked through its coating of crystals because others before me had gradually removed mementos from the battered surface; “flesh is nicked; blue shards are stolen as souvenirs,[6]” writes Tom Morton. Despite the positive interaction between individuals, the destructive nature of a cumulative human presence on the artwork echoes our innately selfish and opportunist nature that could not be manipulated by social housing: the very reason that Utopia could never exist for us. For natural systems will reclaim the temporally insignificant void left by our eventual, inevitable extinction. Seizure serves as a reminder, whether it was the artist’s intention or not, to appreciate the vast wonderment of nature and the minute detail of individual lives in order to overcome dysfunctions and challenges in our society.

[1] Lingwood, J. (ed.) (2008) “The Impregnation of an Object: Roger Hiorns in Conversation with James Lingwood” in Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London


[2] Charlesworth, J. (2008) “Signs of Life” in Lingwood, J (ed.) Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London
[3] Hiorns, R. (2008) Sketchbook Extracts in Lingwood, J (ed.) Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London

[4] Hiorns, R. (2008) Sketchbook Extracts in Lingwood, J (ed.) Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London 

[5] Lingwood, J. (ed.) (2008) “The Impregnation of an Object: Roger Hiorns in Conversation with James Lingwood” in Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London 

[6] Morton, T. (2008) “Crystal Habits” in Lingwood, J. (ed.) Seizure: Roger Hiorns, Artangel: London