The crypt-like basement of Shoreditch Town Hall is the perfect venue for an exhibition on Edgar Allan Poe, especially one that has been festering and growing mould for as long as this. It was in 2002 that arty author Harland Miller first mooted a celebration of American Gothick’s short-lived pioneer through his chums in contemporary art. Back then, the nihilistic stylings of tenebrous painters and ‘spooky’ installation artists might have seemed truly timely but the intervening years has produced a glut of such dark arts, perhaps making this reiteration all the more uncanny, if not a bit old in the tooth. Yet there is a real sense that this show has gestated over countless conversations spent swapping ghost stories or favourite lines penned by Poe, and is all the stronger for this depth.
Of course, the inevitable responses to such darkly delicious yarns as ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and ‘The Raven’ are here: crows, skulls, unearthed bones and empty beds abound. However, even the obvious works aren’t facile fillers but mood enhancers, just as the squalid setting is the perfect backdrop for Christian Marclay’s theatrically tick-tocking watch or Abigail Lane’s peephole with an eye transplanted onto a heart that stares back at you. Certain artists just had to be in this show, especially Damien Hirst, the Chapmans, Mike Nelson, Anselm Kiefer and Gregor Schneider (whose video of pristine institutional corridors is more Kafka than Poe), but the superstar names dialled from Miller’s formidable little black book don’t detract from the overall atmosphere of homage. Indeed, Miller has outdone himself with a wonderful catalogue essay and an outdoor addition to this two-venue mega Poe show, in which a group of white hazmat-suited forensic types scour the grass in Hoxton Square behind a blue cordon tape that tells them where they should be looking: in the title of Poe’s short story ‘The Tell-tale Heart’.
I am afraid I found the show very dated, very late 90's. The fact that so many "big names" were involved made it all the more disappointing. Few of the aritsts "responded" to Poe in more than the most shallow and jejeune way.
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I am afraid I found the show very dated, very late 90's. The fact that so many "big names" were involved made it all the more disappointing. Few of the aritsts "responded" to Poe in more than the most shallow and jejeune way.