There are empty rooms, and there are rooms filled with absence. There are plenty of those in this promenade installation created by Tristan Sharps for dreamthinkspeak, which takes audiences on a dreamlike journey through the underbelly of Shoreditch town hall. The space has been made over as a budget hotel, and there is one room in particular, an empty bedroom, that is choked with the presence of a life unseen, as if someone has just left. It is filled with the scent of perfume; a radio plays. Everything in the room has a “sold” sticker. Just like beautiful, raddled and increasingly shiny new Shoreditch itself.
Sharps always responds exquisitely to the architecture of the building to create ritualised spaces of absence and mourning that borrow from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Narnia’s wardrobes. At the grand entrance you will find the check-in, where you will be greeted and dispatched to the adjacent bar where you would do well to read one of the doctored copies of the Evening Standard. There is a report about the eviction of socialite Margaret Beaumont from the hotel, which is in the hands of new owners eager to make a killing on their investment.
Beaumont is clearly inspired by the Duchess of Argyll, who spent her later years in a smart hotel before being ejected for debt.
But this is not a story of nostalgia for a lost world of pearls, privilege and parties, although it might be projected that way. Walking through a series of empty corridors and peering through peep holes, we encounter a world that gradually telescopes smaller and smaller even as it multiplies so that everything looks the same and we are lost in miniature mazes.
It’s obvious, but it’s neatly if slightly sparingly done. While you could race through, it pays to linger before emerging to splurge on your credit card in one of Hoxton’s teeming bars or restaurants and add to your own personal debt.
• At Shoreditch town hall until 25 October. Box office: 020-7739 6176.
