Amid the Brexit mayhem and resignations going on in London’s Westminster is a new installation by artist Jorge Otero-Pailos, located in the oldest part of the Houses of Parliament.

Commissioned by Artangel, the work is a 50-metre-long latex cast of Westminster Hall’s eastern wall and contains the space’s soot and dust that have built up over centuries.

The installation, called The Ethics of Dust, is directly opposite the wall from which the casting was retrieved. It also doubles as a conservation project because the casting removed dirt from the original wall. Otero-Pailos carried out a similar project in the 14th-century Doge’s Palace back in 2009. Westminster Hall, by comparison, was built in 1099 under the reign of William II.

‘It’s so important to think of conservation as art because nothing lasts without conservation,’ said Otero-Pailos, who is also an architect, a conservationist and a professor in historic preservation at New York’s Columbia University.

‘When an artist makes an artwork, the origin of that work is to make something last, even if it’s for a brief moment. The whole idea of art is that somebody will be sufficiently gripped by it, to want to take care of it and to make it their own.’

The installation also reveals details about the space’s history. For example, the work is darker towards the hall’s northern entrance because of the build-up of soot from the 19th century when the door was always kept open.

‘You’re seeing an x-ray of that environment,’ said Otero-Pailos.

He added: ‘We run past beautiful things all the time, and never just take them in. This allows people to take a step back, look around and take in the space. Just to think about that deep time is really important.’

The Ethics of Dust runs from 29 June to 1 September at Westminster Hall.

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