Sarah Sze, The Waiting Room

For her long-awaited project with Artangel, New York-based artist Sarah Sze is transforming a large Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye Station that has lain empty for almost 50 years.

An atmospheric construction of cascading lines emerges from the centre of the vaulted waiting room to create a mesmerising model of a fragile world. A multitude of flickering videos illuminate the structure and swirl around the space, conveying the velocity and volatility of living in the age of the smartphone.

The writer Zadie Smith recently compared the experience of Sze’s installations as like being in an opened-up iPhone, with the technology taken apart and the image bank it stores exploded into three-dimensional space. Tactile and imagined experience, momentous and incidental events are held in a precarious equilibrium in Sze’s immersive installation.

Sarah Sze recently said: “I’ve always been interested in certain times throughout history where our relationship to the way we experience time and space in the world speeds up radically. The invention of the aeroplane, the invention of the train, you see really interesting work coming out of that time, in film, visual arts and writing. We are in the middle of an extreme hurricane where we are learning to speak through images at an exponential pace.”

Image: Sarah Sze, Metronome, The Waiting Room, 2023. Photography: Thierry Bal.

Images: (top) portrait of Khairani Barokka, photography by Matthew Thompson; (middle) portrait of Abi Palmer, photography by Faith Aylward, styled by Mia Maxwell; (bottom) portrait of Peter Adjaye, photography by Nicola Hippesley.

Artist Sarah Sze is joined in conversation by artist Christian Marclay to discuss her distinctive sculptural language and her wider practice, through which audiences are immersed in complex and dynamic environments that incorporate an abundance of imagery with everyday objects and materials.

Sze has recently said: “I’ve always been interested in certain times throughout history where our relationship to the way we experience time and space in the world speeds up radically. The invention of the aeroplane, the invention of the train, you see really interesting work coming out of that time, in film, visual arts and writing. We are in the middle of an extreme hurricane where we are learning to speak through images at an exponential pace.”

This event marked the launch of Sze's major new installation, Metronome, at the Waiting Room at Peckham Rye Station. It took place at local institution Peckhamplex on 19 May 2023.

Videography by Tim Bedingfield.

As part of the public programme for the Waiting Room, artists and writers have been invited to present on the themes that emerge from Sarah Sze's new exhibition at Peckham Rye Station. For the second event in the series, artists Chloe Filani with accompanied soundscapes by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Nicola Singh and Petra Szemán participated in an evening of readings and performances that will focus on the theme of Presence in relation to bodies, queerness, race and place.

As part of the public programme for the Waiting Room, artists and writers have been invited to present on the themes that emerge from Sarah Sze's new exhibition at Peckham Rye Station.

For the first event in the series, artist Savinder Bual, artist Carl Gent and writer Belinda Zhawi with vocalist Plumm perform in an evening of readings on the topic of time at The Waiting Room.

About the performers

Images: (top to bottom) Carl Gent, photography by Hailey Ford; Savinder Bual, photography by Elena Blanco; Belinda Zhawi, photography by Caleb Azumah Nelson; Plumm, photograhy by Pablo Byrne.

Enhance your visit to Sarah Sze, The Waiting Room with the accompanying interactive mobile guide, now live on the Bloomberg Connects app. Access exclusive content via the free app, including the forthcoming Peckham Art Map, an artist video featuring Sarah Sze and more.

Download the Bloomberg Connects app and enjoy new Artangel exhibitions by using the app as your live guide, discover ongoing projects and more.

The Bloomberg Connects digital guide is part of a wider digital engagement programme at Artangel, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, to enhance digital access for all of our live projects – designed to guide you through each unique space with exclusive content, audio guides, exhibition text and more. 

You can download the app for free via the Google Play store or the App store.

Since her first exhibitions in the late 1990s, the New-York based artist Sarah Sze has developed a distinctive sculptural language that challenges the static nature of sculpture and immerses audiences in complex, dynamic environments. 

Sze studied architecture, began working as an artist by making paintings, and then developed a sculptural practice that brings together fragile structures, found objects and video footage into large-scale installations. In recent years, the proliferation of images in everyday life has been at the heart of a series of new works which Sze calls Timekeepers.   

These multimedia installations have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the world including Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto.    

Timelapse, a major exhibition of Sze’s work is on show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York until September 10 2023. 

Image: (above) Sarah Sze in her studio. Photographed by Deborah Feingold; (left) Sarah Sze at the Waiting Room, 2023. Photographed by Thierry Bal.

"She’s created a scenario in which we glimpse memory – that in our minds and the machines we carry – being exploded. It’s disorientating, often beautiful, and utterly compelling." - Ben Luke, Evening Standard, 17 May 2023

“Like an experiment in time travel and a vision of things to come, Sze’s exhilarating video sculpture gives the sensation of a brain fried by information overload.” - Adrian Searle, The Guardian, 18 May 2023

“Seeing one of Sarah’s Timekeeper installations several years ago was a lightbulb moment – an artist finding a brilliant way to convey how we experience time and space today: the marvellous and the mundane, the fleeting and the fragile, all together,” says Lingwood. - Claire Armitstead, The Guardian, 14 May 2023

"I’m interested in showing the viewer that the work is generating itself before your eyes." - Sarah Sze interviewed by Torey Akers, The Art Newspaper, 12 May 2023

"Another haunting Artangel commission, matching the acclaimed artist with a colossal waiting room that has been boarded up for 50 years inside an active London station." - The best free spring culture in Britain, chosen by Observer critics

Peckham Rye Station was designed by architect Charles Driver (1832-1900), and built by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in 1865. The unusual size of the waiting room reflects the significance of Peckham Rye Station as an important junction station in South London and where people would change trains to visit the popular Crystal Palace. In 1922, the waiting room was repurposed as a billiard hall, before being closed by British Rail in 1962. It has remained inaccessible to the public for the past 60 years. Over the past 10 years, with significant community advocacy, sections of the station have been restored and re-opened, culminating with a major roof and facade restoration funded by Network Rail in 2023. Sarah Sze's exhibition is the first major presentation in the waiting room since it was closed to the public in 1962.

Image: Peckham Rye Station, 1892

Commissioned and produced by Artangel, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum & OGR, Torino with the support of Victoria Miro.  

Generously supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.  

Supported by Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation, The Henry Moore Foundation, Agnes Gund, Danny and Manizeh Rimer.

With thanks to The Arch Company and Network Rail.  

Artangel is generously supported using public funding by Arts Council England, and the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, The Guardian Angels and The Company of Angels.