How to make art with toxic waste: Richard Wilson’s 20:50

SUV’s may be going down, but oil is back in fashion. Richard Wilson’s installation is on show for the third time in London, in a Saatchi space, at Saatchi’s third gallery, now in Chelsea. I feel very lucky to have seen the ‘indoor oil slick’ twice before, both in its setting on Boundary Road, and then in the Southbank Saatchi gallery. See how it looked t

here.

The first time round, I saw it first in 1993, this artwork blew my young mind. The disused factory in St John’s Wood, as I recall the experience, was an enormous white void, so big it was almost empty, but dotted with ideas (bizarre artworks made of frozen blood, etc.) that made me smile. When I hit the 20:50 room, however, the smile turned to O for awe. It was stunning!!! A gigantic upside down mirror, room-size, made of slick, black oil. Nobody around. Just white walls, light-filled windows, and ‘glass’. But without the glass. Phenomenal. No other installation quite moves me in the same way.

The second time I had the beautiful experience was a decade later,  in the County Hall venue in London’s Southbank. Wood-panelled walls and a delightfully warm and old-fashioned interior throughout, the building did ‘upgrade’, for want of a better expression, the status of the artworks, meaning it felt in places like a historical museum, far different from the gianourmous white cube premises of the nineties. 20:50 in a wood-panelled room veered on the sublime, except that as with all things in life, the first time has the most impact. But don’t get me wrong, the Southbank version of an oil-filled lounge is nothing short of exquisite. That’s how astonishing this piece is.

Now it’s on view, as in it’s infancy (thanks go to Matt’s gallery for taking the primordial risk of enabling this work in the 80’s, but I didn’t see 20:50 then, so can’t comment on the original setting), in a barren white room. It would be fine, if you could actually experience it. However, the gallery has halved the sensation by prohibiting the public from walking down the slope. Ridiculous health & safety regulations are alleged, unsurprisingly. Gosh, won’t we laugh at ourselves in the future knowing how much we let policy overtake our common sense and innate sense of survival. I mean, how many people do you know who really want to bathe in disused machine oil? Surely even the free-radicals in deep-fried oil don’t age the skin that badly! I must add, though, that the public must take some responsibility for this unfortunate barrier (and be pretty dumb/disrespectful too) because visitors had thrown in coins and other objects (including socks, I am told by Saatchi staff!) leading to the artwork having to be drained (and barricaded…).

Still, half the sensation is nonetheless a massive endorphin rush. Pay your respects to the oil, rewards await.

#EnvironmentalArt #Installations #London