Saskia Olde Wolbers Yes, these eyes are windows (87 Hackford Row)

Artangel has a consistent record for commissioning projects that provide visitors with unique encounters in site-specific artworks. Their latest, by Saskia Olde Wolbers can be found at 87 Hackford Road in Brixton.

Until the 1970s 87 Hackford Road was just a nondescript, if rather run down house scheduled for demolition along with its neighbours. That was until a postman turned amateur detective identified it as having briefly been home to a 19 year-old Vincent Van Gogh.

There are few artefacts left in the building to attest to the presence of its former occupants. However, from tiny scraps of evidence, their unlikely sounding stories have been reconstructed.

Olde Wolbers’ house-wide installation has all the theatrics of a funfair ghost house. A peculiar haunting afflicts this house. Under strict instructions to ring the doorbell and enter the building only at an allotted time, visitors are guided through the building by disembodied voices and flickering lights.

Throughout the effortlessly choreographed 30 minutes that visitors are allowed to spend in the house, voices haunting attics and cupboards narrate the story of the building’s 1970s tenants and their fight with the council. Meanwhile and in parallel, the story of Van Gogh’s time here is pieced together through the few artefacts that have come to light in corroboration of his previous occupancy there.

Like a magic-realist stage play, the established facts are extraordinary, yet the most quotidian details of the house’s story are subject to endless academic speculation. Olde Wolbers treats us to tales involving Van Gogh’s alleged tryst with the landlady’s daughter, a bizarre argument about the concrete dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park and a Chinese violinist turned businessman’s plan to restore the building. All the while we hear the sound of the underground river that runs beneath the house, and which is slowly destroying it.

Yes, these eyes are windows continues until June 22, be absolutely sure to book a visit before then.