Turbine Hall Swimming Pool // Richard Wilson

In 1985 Richard Wilson created Hopperhead at the Cafe Gallery, next to the shallow end of the outdoor swimming pool in Southwark Park. With this work 21,000 gallons of water were pumped out of the pool and projected 33 feet across the gallery as a high pressure jet through the gallery window to where it was collected in a hopperhead and fed into the drains. By 2000 the pool and Cafe Gallery had closed. 'Turbine Hall Swimming Pool' creates a dialogue on change and dereliction between the swimming pool (originally built as unemployment relief), the Cafe Gallery and the former Clare College Mission Church at Dilston Grove which had been deconsecrated and was at the time abandoned.

The catalogue details an Installation in a former church, comprising of wall fabricated from insulation material that suppresses the noise of a diesel generator placed in the space to power a video projection of a drummer. The drummer is pictured playing against a backdrop of the derelict local open-air swimming pool, improvising in response to the noise of the engine. The audio CD is a 15 minute duet between the generator and the drummer.

Published in 2000, Audio CD, 28 page booklet