Friday, 24 September 2010 -
Saturday, 11 December 2010
"an unfathomable farce - a farce that goes down to the roots of the universe."
So wrote Dickens scholar G K Chesterton about Dickens penultimate novel, Our Mutual Friend. A tale of social facades, dark secrets and manipulative schemes. The secrets hidden within the dustheaps of Victorian Kings Cross are central to the storyline. In it a host of characters, gold diggers and questers of moral truths in turns debase and redeem themselves in a cycle of altruistic and anti-social acts.
In an investigative manner, 14 artists have devised artworks in response to Dickens former home in Doughty Street and his literature. Based in two parallel but contrasting spaces, the exhibition functions as a series of artworks intervening with the existing museum displays and installed within the newly vacated office spaces next door. A dual exhibition moving between psychological space and that of the language of (re)construction.
The facades of society are central to Our Mutual Friend and within the not so empty shell of number 49 Doughty Street the materials tell a story of contemporary urbanism where perhaps the holes, peeling walls and used carpets contain much more than just a veneer.
Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LX
Monday to Saturday: 10am-5pm, Sunday: 11am-5pm
Admission: Adults £6, Concessions £4.50, Children £3
So wrote Dickens scholar G K Chesterton about Dickens penultimate novel, Our Mutual Friend. A tale of social facades, dark secrets and manipulative schemes. The secrets hidden within the dustheaps of Victorian Kings Cross are central to the storyline. In it a host of characters, gold diggers and questers of moral truths in turns debase and redeem themselves in a cycle of altruistic and anti-social acts.
In an investigative manner, 14 artists have devised artworks in response to Dickens former home in Doughty Street and his literature. Based in two parallel but contrasting spaces, the exhibition functions as a series of artworks intervening with the existing museum displays and installed within the newly vacated office spaces next door. A dual exhibition moving between psychological space and that of the language of (re)construction.
The facades of society are central to Our Mutual Friend and within the not so empty shell of number 49 Doughty Street the materials tell a story of contemporary urbanism where perhaps the holes, peeling walls and used carpets contain much more than just a veneer.
Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LX
Monday to Saturday: 10am-5pm, Sunday: 11am-5pm
Admission: Adults £6, Concessions £4.50, Children £3