Electric House Border Agency Office Kabbalah
Laser toner (two passes, grayscale and duotone) on Fabriano paper
86 cm x 120 cm

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This set of 8 prints layer photographs of the carved urns -dedicated to ‘fire’, ‘air’, ‘earth’, ‘water’, ‘time’, ‘energy’, ‘flight’, ‘Elysium’, and ‘Hesperides’ -crowning the capitals of the internal courtyard columns, with photographic traces of immigration bureaucracy.

Electric House Border Agency Office Kabbalah documents the space currently known as Electric House, a grade II listed building in the heart of East Croydon that is today closed and waiting redevelopment into luxury apartments and store. The photographs survey the compression of two uses of the building that signal the heritage (official or not) of Croydon public services architecture. On the one hand, investigates the 1st era of the building, and the overlooked influence of alchemy and metaphysics, in the work of British architect Robert Atkinson, commissioned by the County Borough of Croydon to create the Electricity showrooms, between 1939 -1942. On the other hand, it exposes the second life of the building as the infamous UK Border Agency, which was modernised from the original showrooms into offices and interview rooms in the 1990s.

Office Kabbalah
Photozine
32 pages | 20 cm x 14 cm | laser printed black & white on corona offset 120g | unbound
A collaboration with carpark magazine #13

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Electric House
Electricity showrooms for County Borough of Croydon by Robert Atkinson 1939-42
Home Office and Ministry of Home Security public basement shelter  1941-1945
Remodeled for the home office UK Border Agency  1990-2013
Listed Grade II Heritage Building   1995
msdm studio 2018-2019