Now that I think about it, even the address of the exhibition has a Gothic aftertaste: the Vulcan Works on Angel Square.
When things just fall into place like that… I’m not a superstitious person, or a religious person but sometimes you get the impression that occasionally great unseen templates line up and the cold light of some universal truth can shine through.
Welcome to Gothic Revival by Jarman award-winning digital artist David Panos. The Guardian newspaper loves it. I don’t want to come across like I’m in any way impressed by those London media types but that is pretty cool.
You push at the blackened glass of the door to Unit 9 and step out of the crisp winter air onto thick red carpeted stairs leading upwards into sounds and darkness.
You are in a large dimmed room dominated by two large pub-sized flat screens arranged side by side. A handful of chairs are arranged facing the screens and behind them on a short pillar rests a small box that looks like a prototype ghost trap which I investigate first.
It is an analogue monitor, presenting a array of subculture garments like a studded cuff or a scrap of fishnet in their own aquarium of light and energy. In one sense the threads of light forming the picture feel like antiquated technology, in another they feel as luminously timeless as a medieval engraving. It’s called Time Crystals and dates from 2016.
There is an archaeological energy to the items depicted (how did that fishnet get torn? what broke that cuff open?) that sets you up nicely for the sifting of Northamptonian sights and sounds that arrives on the main screens.
Dark rock covers band Raven Rust are rehearsing the ominous opening chords of Belalugosi Is Dead, the single from Northampton band Bauhaus that triggered the goth music movement in the last century and in turn lured Panos from London for his exploration of the gothic in this century.
On the other screen red robed choristers from All Saints Church rehearse hymns plucked from a library that dips even deeper into the past. Sometimes the soundtracks blend. Sometimes they interrupt each other precipitously. And then dialogue emerges. Father Oliver Coss describes the history of the town as digitised segments of its architecture twitch on the screen and then other voices describe a less glorious mundane present, traumatised by change.
Are we seeing a town living in the ruins of its own past, cursed with the inability to build anything but new ruins? It doesn’t feel like Panos is picking on Northampton, the scenes of boarded-up litter strewn shopping precincts are like a lot of places beyond London’s immediate gravitational pull.
What is solid in the real world becomes ephemeral in Gothic Revival but what is intangible or unnoticed in reality is revealed by these visual and audio snapshots of the town.
Some things are strikingly hopeful amidst the broken grandeur of pixelized archways and empty carrier bags tumble-weeding down Abington Street. You might think of the choir of All Saints as being one of the more culturally ancient institutions in the town and yet you are looking at as diverse a group of young people as you could find anywhere in Northampton. It sounds contrived but it is what it is. That is the choir.
Alongside that glimpse of a possible harmonious future inside the stone bones of the town’s past the camera pulls back to reveal Raven Rust in all their middle-aged pub rock glory, meticulously assembling their version of the Bauhaus classic. The face of the guitarist looks like he could be running a Primary School somewhere but his fingernails are painted glossy black. They capture a sense of ordinary people doing extraordinary things without fuss, for their own amusement as much as ours, and that feels so Northampton.
Gothic Revival really works for me. It is not a documentary nor a complete excavation of every contribution Northampton makes to the gothic tradition but as a piece of art it has the immediacy of a sampling of our present – a way of seeing ourselves that no other lens provides.
There is a question here for us as townsfolk. Has Panos captured some nuggets of truth about Northampton’s distinct character as a place? Is there something we could be leaning into effortlessly and celebrating as much as we do other aspects of our history and what goes on here? A town that bridges the yawning gap between boots and princesses must be sitting on a well-spring of goth.
Gothic Revival is the final part of NN Contemporary Art’s Sensing Place season which has seen the arts organisation staging exhibitions at various locations while its future home at 24 Guildhall is reconfigured. The new base will include gallery, studio and exhibition space as well as a reading room and opens next year.
Gothic Revival runs until January 20.
For details of opening times see the NN Contemporary website.
