Conrad Shawcross: Tunnel Visionary

It's been over 50 years since the public travelled through the Kingsway tram subway. London's last networked tram departed from Holborn station on its final journey in 1952. The tunnel's rails are now buried under concrete and its sloping entrance on Southampton Row is gated and padlocked. But now a group of guys in hi-vis vests are again laying track along part of the tunnel's length; not for trams, but for artist Conrad Shawcross's new sculptural installation, 'Chord'.

Commissioned by arts organisation Measure, 'Chord' is Shawcross's most ambitious work to date - two identical giant metal machines, each holding 162 spools of different-coloured anorak cord that, over a four-week period, will create a thick twist of rainbow rope as the machines gradually move apart along the newly laid wooden rails. 'These are the remaining parts of the second machine', Shawcross explains, as he helps his team unload different-sized spool arms from the truck he has just driven down into the underpass. 'So we should have both machines up by the end of the day'. With just one half in place it's already an impressive sight, the complex arrangement of gleaming silver spools resembling a strange floral pattern when viewed head on. When the second machine is bolted together and the motor switched on, it will be ready for visitors will be taken down at 30-minute intervals to experience the slow twisting process take place.

Shawcross, who has exhibited in public and private art institutions in the UK and abroad, has made smaller rope machines in the past, as well as complex wooden sculptures that relate to other scientific subjects, including the mathematics of music and the work of Charles Babbage, nineteenth-century inventor of the first computing machine, the 'Difference Engine'. It's not surprising that he has also recently become artist-in-residence at the Science Museum (where a version of Babbage's machine is housed).

' “Difference Engine” is one of my favourite exhibits', he explains, 'and it's tragic that it was never successfully realised in Babbage's lifetime, not because his plans were faulty, but because the engineering technology of the time let him down.'

The Kingsway subway - the full length of which runs right through Aldwych to Waterloo - has mainly been used in recent years as council storage for road signs, rubble and kerb stones. It's undergone something of a clean-up in preparation for 'Chord' but still retains the atmosphere of an abandoned and slightly grimy, secret London space. The layout of the former Holborn tram station is still recognisable and the dilapidated and somewhat eerie Portakabins from its ten-year stint (from 1974-1984) as the location of London's pre-Thames Barrier flood control centre are also still there, in the stretch of tunnel beyond where 'Chord' is being assembled.

But it isn't the path of London history or even transport history that 'Chord' will be measuring over its four-week installation. It will be recording the path of time and of its own existence. 'The rope that “Chord” will produce will become a timeline for the exhibition, with every section of it traceable back to the specific duration of time over which it was made', Shawcross explains. 'It acts as a visual metaphor for the fact that we perceive time in a linear way. I'm not an expert on the subject but whether time is actually linear is an ongoing debate within science, so “Chord” can also be a visual metaphor for weaving all these ideas together. And this strange tunnel under London is the perfect space in which to create this work.'

'Chord' is open from Thur Oct 8-Nov 8 2009. Admission is free but booking is required at the venue or through the Measure website