- Venue
- Victoria Miro Gallery
- Location
Comprising of plant cuttings, light bulbs, paper, ladders, fans, boxes, matchsticks and various other DIY and pound shop objects, Sarah Sze’s beautifully intricate sculptures at the Victoria Miro gallery creep down the walls and stretch out across the gallery floor.There is an unnerving sense that her sculptures are growing. Not like a fungus, that’s too ugly, more like a benevolent form of Ivy.
I wonder if gallery owner Victoria Miro has suffered any nightmares since the installation of the show, where she arrives at work in the morning, unlocks the front door, picks up her post and then looks up, only to find that her pristine gallery, along with its brand new extension, has been infested by an ecosystem of inanimate objects.
Letting out a startled “oh”, she takes a deep breath and then attempts to walk towards the back office.
Tiptoeing through the main gallery, she tries to avoid knocking over the various bubbling flasks of water and is careful not to disrupt the motion of a hanging plum-line which has found its own rhythm in the gentle wind produced by a nearby electric fan.
Victoria reaches the middle of the gallery and pauses. She is unsure of how to proceed. Becoming acutely aware of the noise emanating from the murmuring fans and bubbling flasks of water, she starts to feel overwhelmed. And then, just as a line of red wool starts to twist itself around her ankle, she wakes in a cold sweat, gasping for air.
Sitting up in bed, she puts on her reading glasses and turns to the CCTV monitor which she keeps on her bedside table. The screen shows the interior of her gallery. She squints through the fuzzy black and white image and then breathes a sigh of relief – the blades of the fans are all motionless, the lights are all switched off and the work is exactly as she left it only a few hours ago.
Victoria takes off her glasses, has a sip of water and falls back into a deep blissful sleep, contented by the thought that Sze’s work isn’t alive after all.
