Opening on June 29, The Ethics of Dust is a major temporary site-specific artwork commissioned and produced by Artangel for Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the Houses of Parliament, home of the UK’s House of Commons and House of Lords.
Created by artist, architect and conservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos, the work is a 50 meter long translucent latex cast of the hall’s internal east wall, containing hundreds of years of surface pollution and dust. The Ethics of Dust is made possible with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Suspended from Westminster Hall’s 28-meter high hammerbeam roof, the latex sheet contains innumerable particles of dust, soot and dirt gently lifted from the wall, the method for sensitively cleaning this UNESCO world heritage site. Artangel and Otero-Pailos have worked in parallel with Parliament’s restoration and stone cleaning project over a period of five years, culminating in the artist retrieving the latex used to clean the hall to create The Ethics of Dust.
Michael Morris and James Lingwood, Co-Directors of Artangel, said “The Ethics of Dust is amongst Artangel’s most ambitious undertakings, made possible by the goodwill of a great many stakeholders within the Palace of Westminster, brought together by the shared belief in a bold and imaginative idea; an idea at the cusp of contemporary art and architectural conservation. After several years of quiet and careful planning, we are delighted that Jorge Otero-Pailos’s latex casting of Westminster Hall’s east elevation will be experienced by those who pass through it over the summer.”
The installation will be displayed at Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament, London, from June 28 until September 1, 2016.
