“The building really has a life of its own,” explains assistant curator Tarini Malik, “the curator Cliff Lauson could not be more astute when he said that the building is another voice – he called it the silent curator. That’s the one point I would disagree with him on, as it’s a loud voice!” The building does indeed creep into almost all of the works, its triangular rooflights edging into the curves of Anish Kapoor’s “Sky Mirror, Blue” and even inspiring a new work by Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes, made from hundreds of interlocking brass triangles suspended from the ceiling, referencing the rooftop skyline.
Wilson’s fascination with buildings and architecture began with Matt’s gallery during the 1980s, when he told us that he would go in “to unbolt the building and move it around, to play with the space.” This birthed the first iteration of 20:50, which moved to the vast industrial space of Saatchi Gallery in Boundary Road before finding a permanent home at MONA in Tasmania (I’d like to think it’s on a tourist visa at the Hayward Gallery.) One of my Saturday jobs as a teenager was at Saatchi, and I still remember holding the flat of my palm just millimeters above the surface of 20:50; at the preview on Tuesday morning, standing next to Hayward’s director Ralph Rugoff and gazing at 20:50, he told me that, “the work was designed to be irresistible.” He might be right – here I am, after all, 20 years later and still entranced.