A new sound artwork by Turner prize-nominated artist Rory Pilgrim launches today at Waterloo Underground station with Transport for London’s (TfL’s) Art on the Underground programme. It expands on Pilgrim’s engagement with those affected by the criminal justice system and explores a connection between London and Dorset’s Isle of Portland, whose stone has helped build London.
Go Find Miracles is a 10-minute piece combining music and spoken word, produced in collaboration with the Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme (CCSaR), the Feminist Library in Peckham and the Prison Choir Project. It will play for a fortnight between 10:00 and 17:00 on weekdays until Friday 25 July, along the moving walkway that connects the Jubilee and Northern lines at Waterloo Underground station.
The piece asks how we go beneath the surface to imagine new structures of repair and possibility. It focuses on the role that the Isle of Portland, Dorset, has played in shaping London, with Portland stone being used to build many of London’s most iconic buildings, including TfL’s historic headquarters, 55 Broadway, and Waterloo station itself. Portland is also the site of two prisons and the former site of a prison barge, with many of those imprisoned having historically worked in the quarries.
Expanding from Pilgrim’s long-term collaboration with communities on Portland, Go Find Miracles explores how the law impacts our lives and environment. Structured around a prayer of call and response between London and Portland, it is recorded in an underground quarry and on a disused Jubilee line platform. Spoken reflections and poetry by Carina Murray and Holly Upton are accompanied by music composed by Pilgrim and sung by soloist Robyn Haddon, alumni of the Prison Choir Project, and a further choir of singers. The lyrics and melodies of the work have partly been written with people from HMP/YOI Portland. With this new sound artwork, Pilgrim asks: if we break the loop, is it here we find space for miracles?
Go Find Miracles is a continuation of Pilgrim’s collaborative work across music composition, performance, film, drawing and text, reflecting and redefining how we come together to shape social change. The new work is heard alongside visual artworks by Pilgrim on display throughout Waterloo Underground station and is accessible through a QR code on posters across the network. An expanded leaflet documenting the piece’s development is available to collect from Waterloo Underground station.
