Es Devlin's Mirror Maze: 'I'm looking at the man in the mirror...'

Image by Victor Frankowski from Dezeen. 

I used to live near Peckham, and when I walked its streets I remember an assault on the senses. The interchangeable smells of raw meat and fish, booming bass boxes fighting against one another, strip lit hair salons bubbling with chatter and shops bursting with lurid cheap goods.
This was over 15 years ago, London has always been a place of swelling gentrification, but it wasn't all pervading then, the words hipster, smartphone and small batch coffee didn't exist yet. There were large areas of London for less affluent communities and struggling actors, like myself at the time, to live relatively cheaply. Peckham, today, feels like the last of a dying breed, and it is, white middle class girls with high top ponytails and undercuts stood out amongst the multicultural faces. I was one of them, an interloper too, eye me with suspicion for I am an arbiter of no good.

For I was, of course, there to experience an art installation in a large post industrial warehouse (once the artists move the property prices are sure to follow) called Mirror Maze, set designer Es Devlin's, first foray into the form. Peckham is where Devlin's is based although it would be inaccurate to describe her as a local artist. Once a designer for small off west end theatres, like the Gate and the Bush, she moved on to the National and Almeida and now works on stage shows internationally with the kind of musical artists who only need one name; Kanye, Adele, Beyonce, Miley. She also designed for the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. So, where do you go from there? You go back to Peckham. I followed directions (I didn't need to really, I just gravitated along a stream of hip young media types) and found a long queue leading to a courtyard of industrial look buildings (apparently manufacture was mainly cricket bats) now occupied by creatives and restaurant pop ups. I was told the queue from that point would be about two hours. I had some vigorous eavesdropping to do, I was going to be busy.

The reason for this preamble, is that Mirror Maze, despite the high walls that surround the outside, cannot be considered as separate from its surrounding or from those who encounter it. However, the piece itself is beautifully crafted. The first room is a skilfully mapped projection of a designers hands drawing the installation into being, she whispers elusive words sexily over the top ('designate', 'alleviate'). As the lines begin to take shape, we are then invited to step inside the drawing through a hole in the wall. Within the hole is an Escheresque labyrinth of mirrored staircases and tunnels, its splintered surfaces repeating back through one another into infinity. Within this larger space there is a another womb like room with walls flooded with a kaleidoscope of warm light, comprised from hectic videos of Devlin's life, her travels and family, sped up, filtered and distorted. We stood in the middle, on a bridge over smartphone glass black water (reminiscent of Richard Wilson's 20:50). The final room contained the bespoke (designed by Chanel's smell-ier Olivier Polge) scent which inspired the whole thing. Based upon (I learn from her interview on Radio 4) a Jasmine candle which her husband had bought for her, the colour fluorescent orange and John Hopkin's song 'Abandoned window'. It is a beautiful fleeting scent created only for the installation ('it will exist only in the memories of those who took the trouble to go there').

Although, despite the array of cold flat surfaces, this is not an empty box. Devlin says the aim for the piece was to 'explore how space could represent a search for identity'. And, Oh boy! was she right, it felt exactly like stepping inside the modern day ego. It was a conduit for narcissism. For a generation of selfie obsessives, Devlin has created a playground, they ran around giddily, smartphones in fist, taking endless pictures of themselves, taking pictures of themselves, taking pictures of themselves, taking pictures of themselves... Devlin states that the piece was built with Instagram in mind, a space for people to take pictures within. It was free for all those who entered, sponsored by Chanel and ID Magazine. An astute piece of marketing on behalf of both brands, whose names evoke the past to many young Millenials, firmly associating themselves with the present through Devlin's brand of stadium-sized ego chic.

Much like Es Devlin's collaborators (Kanye especially) the piece takes itself very seriously but is also a lot of fun. As we stood outside in the queue, a buoyant bouncer shepherded us in energetically and the crowd gossiped and took pictures good naturedly. I couldn't help but feel that much of the focus on sensations and the feel of the piece was lost among the ocular centric crowd. Whilst in the last room full of scent, I noticed the group were keener on taking advantage of the rose tinted lighting on their cheekbones then stop and pick out the subtleties within the scent that Deslin described. Although, maybe that's the idea, perhaps she wants for a moment, for people to feel amazing, a mini version of Kanye on his floating platform above the audience. For me the whole evening was a fascinating journey into the young metropolitan mind which equally excited and terrified me.