Conductor by Jane Prophet was a site-specific installation commissioned in response to Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London, to coincide with the opening of the restored post-industrial building as an art space in October 2020. Conductor was installed for six months.
Described by James Hall in Artforum as, ‘a tantalizing optical tease, a sort of subterranean Bridget Riley for the installation age’, Conductor’s materials (water and electro-luminescent light cables) and its form were inspired by the history and structure of the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, especially its Boiler House. It was a solid industrial building and at the same time a bubble of air surrounded by water – the Thames within a stones’ throw, an adjacent Shadwell Basin, huge watery vaults beneath the car park and two giant water tanks above the space.
For Conductor, a large body of water was brought into the Boiler House to imagine a slight rise in the water table. When the building ceased to produce hydraulic power, a tele-communications company was quick to buy its network of almost 200 miles of pipes to run its cables along. Electro-luminescence was used by the same company to make mobile phone screens glow green. The grid used to define the number and position of light cables was taken directly from the spacing of the girders in the ceiling of the Boiler House. Researching the original architectural scale and proportion of the building made Conductor look as if it belonged.
Visitors walked from the ground level of the Engine Room (housing the restaurant) through a door that led onto a suspended steel staircase. From there, a view into the vast Boiler House opened: a darkness split with lines of green light. The elector-luminescent cables reflected in 74 tonnes of water and appeared to continue forever.