Empty Club
Gabriel Orozco

25 June - 28 July 1996
The Devonshire Club, 50 St James's Street, London

The grand Georgian building at 50 St James's Street was first a gambling den - the home of Crockford's notorious "Temple of Chance" in the 1820s; then until the 1960s, The Devonshire Club, a domain for English gentlemen. 50 St James's lies at the heart of a certain kind of English culture, reserved and powerful. Impeccably refurbished for its new life as a corporate headquarters, 50 St. James's was in a state of waiting, suspended between an emptied-out past and an unknown future.

For his first commission in London, the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco transformed some of the silent interiors of this once animated building.

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"In the early 1980s 50 St. James's Street was acquired by new owners and refurbished at exorbitant expense. Ersatz historical carpets, wall marbling, curtains and chandeliers were installed in the grand rooms; monochrome carpets, standard fixtures and fittings in the rooms on the upper floors. Any texture, sign or smell of its past was eradicated. There were no signs of decay, no reminders of what the place had been. 50 St. James's was sanitised and neutralised, voided of nostalgia or charm..."

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