Alma Berrow’s installation Echo appears as a functional, run-of-the-mill bathroom installed within the gallery space. Viewers are invited to physically step into the work, and on closer inspection, minute details are revealed to suggest that the room has been recently inhabited. Ceramic toothbrushes, open pill boxes, towers of empty loo roll, a pile of dirty mags and pube-covered soap, half-smoked cigarettes in ashtrays, and an abandoned backgammon reanimate the seemingly static space. Berrow reminds us that the bathroom is a space where the unimaginable becomes possible, adorning an uncanny bathtub with large surrealist-like hands, taps shaped like noses and a plughole disguised as a mouth. These ornate bathroom fixtures give the impression of nymphs caught mid-play, evoking notions of escapism, joy and coming of age.
