A small sign points down a flight of unexceptional stone steps from the courtyard of Somerset House. Almost immediately the everyday and familiar disappear and you are enveloped in sounds of water - gurgling, dripping, hissing. It is quiet but pervasive, and the descent feels like an immersion into an underwater world. Stepping hesitantly along the lightwells, and peering around corners, sounds emanate tantalisingly from the rows of grotto-like cellars, their tenebrous interiors lit by flickering projections.

Water-stained stonework and metal grilles add to the atmosphere; inside the dead house, the gloom is oppressive, and the stifled sense of catacombs is intensified by the discovery of memorial plaques at the far end. There is a tension and unease generated, too, by the large-scale projection of straining steel ropes, vibrating endlessly across the stone walls, as if their seemingly imminent fracture might bring down the whole edifice. Elsewhere there is an image of a heavy industrial wheel that with a small hiss of steam cranks up the pressure. The display, however, remains understated, allowing the visitor’s imagination to create its own interpretations. Many of the projections are unclear, giving a general impression of water in motion; alone in a white cube space these elements would be virtually meaningless, but glimpsed through a circular cavity, such as an underground porthole, they bring to life an unexpected subterranean world. The transience of passing traffic and figures flickering over a bridge stands in contrast to the solid permanence of the building, and the eternal onward flow of the Thames beyond.

This is ‘location art’ par excellence, using the unique architecture of hitherto unexplored passages and vaults beneath Somerset House to present the palimpsest of London, its river and its history, from a new perspective. Until May 31

KATHERINE HUDSON