Stephen Cripps was as shortlived as his art. Born in 1952, Cripps died at age 29, having spent most of his life in a shed on Butlers Wharf, just steps from London’s Tower Bridge. His artistic process was simple: build things, then blow them up. His Tinguelyesque self-destroying sculptures doubled as sound installations. “As soon as I have rehearsed,” Cripps once said, “everything’s gone. By experimenting at each performance, I’m seeing for the first time along with the audience.” When Cripps died in 1982, he was penniless and unknown. “In Real Life,” the first major Cripps exhibition in the U.K., brings the artist and his ephemeral art back into the spotlight. —Elena Clavarino