Paintings: they’re the silent type, right? Try as you might to strike up conversation with a bit of paint on canvas, all you’ll get in return is an oily death stare.
But this fascinating pint-sized exhibition at the Foundling Museum turns how we normally interact with an artwork on its head. Or, more accurately, on its ear, as it asks the gallery-goer to listen to a painting instead of looking at it.
William Hogarth’s ‘The March of the Guards to Finchley’ was painted in 1750 and raffled off to raise funds for the Foundling Hospital. In a quirk of fate, the institution ended up being the beneficiary of the money raised and home to the painting itself, which now sits at the centre of this exhibition. It shows the (imaginary) massing of troops to fight against the fast-approaching army of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. The red-jacketed soldiers stand at what would now be the top of Tottenham Court Road, which, in those days, looked out across open fields to the north.
The show takes this single image and pulls it apart, offering mini-displays on specific bits of it, plus a soundscape installation by Martyn Ware (formerly of The Human League). On the one hand, this approach draws attention to the immense amount of detail in Hogarth’s painting. The entire picture, when you zone in on it, actually functions as almost an allegory and is filled with nods to how, for example, the urban poor could either be turned into upright citizens or succumb to the evils of alcohol and crime. On the other, it gives a really vivid sense of the farting, belching, gin-swigging, politicised London that Hogarth lived in. Even when edged with green fields, our lovable city was a sweaty, stinky, sweary affair. And who knew we only had to open our ears to find that out?