Performance art group Punchdrunk have reinvented how art galleries are traditionally used, says Chris Lo. And they’ve made a damn fine fist of it.

Most art galleries exist to house and serve the works they exhibit. For the most part, that means they are airy spaces with high ceilings, sterile white walls and echoey wooden floors that make you feel sophisticated as you clip-clop around them. And that’s fair enough. You’re there to enjoy the art, not get lost in psychedelic decor, and it could be argued that anything more is just a distraction. The art is the art; the gallery is the frame.

But since 2000, performance art group Punchdrunk have been busily ferreting away to fix broken locations and bring them back to life; to make the spaces they create as much a part of the experience as the installations and performances. Their first performance was a new vision of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, set in a derelict mansion in Exeter. 2005’s The Firebird Ball combined classic Shakespeare with Slavic folklore in a disused factory in Oval. Audiences discover the stories through exploring the nooks and crannies of surreal worlds.

Tunnel 228, Punchdrunk’s latest creation, is a dystopian nightmare lurking under the tracks at Waterloo station. Behind an unassuming bolt-locked door lies a labyrinth of abandoned tunnels and storage rooms, housing an array of underground contraptions and denizens that horrify as much as they fascinate. Most of the space is shrouded in darkness, with the few sources of light either streaking spookily through the smoky air or flickering to life at specific moments.

There are underlying themes that unite everything on display here. Industry. Labour. Oppression. Bedraggled workers trudge wordlessly from place to place, solemnly toiling at their tasks like ghosts of a hopeless past – tugging carts up and down railroad tracks; sending metal balls down iron chutes that criss-cross the space; powering large wooden wheels like trapped hamsters. It’s as much an inherited memory of dehumanising industrialisation from humanity’s real past as it is a fearful glance at a distant, fictionalised future. A Cold War-vintage aura of menace seeps through every brick.

Around one corner lies The Killing Machine, a chair which, when activated, is viciously and ritualistically probed by a pair of metal appendages that make the viewer thankful that it is, at present, empty. Up a set of stairs is an attic-like room where a woman sits alone at a dinner table, weeping into her plate. If you look in the cupboard next to her, you might find a note to read. Down a dark corridor a door opens to reveal an office with a chess set laid out on a desk. A thin man with an eerie stare and bottle-top spectacles might invite you in. He might close the door and lock it before anyone else can follow you.

The best thing about Tunnel 228 (and Punchdrunk in general) is how it encourages you to explore without ever telling you to. The space they have created here is so compelling that you often find yourself, despite the bone-numbing fear, crossing a pitch-black chamber to investigate a dull glow emanating from one corner. The space urges you to push yourself further; to do more than scratch the surface. The best compliment I can think of is that it made me wish that there was no-one else down there with me so I could explore the place alone, and have an adventure I didn’t have to share with anyone.

Unfortunately, Tunnel 228 ran for a mere 15 days ending on May 25^th, but the word is that if the space was a success (and I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was), it could be re-opened in September to give Londoners another chance to see it. So keep your ears open, because this might change how you feel about art galleries forever.