The British Library’s exhibition ‘Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination’ has been enjoying justified praise – indeed we visited it recently and were very impressed. But it has, perhaps, overshadowed another exhibition on a similar theme at the nearby London Metropolitan Archives. Drawing upon their world-class collection of documents, the LMA have put together ‘London Gothic’, an exhibition that puts the case for Britain’s capital as its heart of darkness. It’s more modest in scale and scope than the British Library’s exhibition perhaps, but every bit as fascinating.

Exhibits take us from the London witch-burnings of the 1600s and ghoulish Victorian variety acts, to the capital’s connection to vintage horror cinema and the Batcave Club, which provided a home for the UK’s original Goths in the 1980s. It is London as a fogbound city of graveyards and tarot cards, a haunting metropolis of freakshows and ghosts. In common with all true Gothic, the LMA’s exhibition is as quirky and surprising as it is ghoulish and macabre. It’s also free to get in, and appropriately enough it’s on until April 30th – Walpurgisnacht – the night when witches and sorcerers traditionally gather.

For further information, check out the LMA’s website: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visiting-the-city/archives-and-city-history/london-metropolitan-archives/Pages/default.aspx

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by Gavin Baddeley
http://www.gavinbaddeley.com/

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2014 in Uncategorized.