Lucy Vickery

When Van Gogh lived in London

Immersive new Artangel commission explores the London house of the Dutch artist

[Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 31 May 2014

Eighty-seven Hackford Road, SW9, is unremarkable but for a blue plaque telling the world that Vincent van Gogh once lived there. The building has been empty since 2012 but now the Dutch artist Saskia Olde Wolbers has filled it with voices.

‘Yes, these Eyes are the Windows’ (until 22 June) is an Artangel-commissioned installation that explores the line between fact and fiction by telling the story of this terraced house from when a 19-year-old van Gogh was a tenant there in the 1870s to the present day.

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