Into the world of the great ghostbuster
Potentially alluring, this exhibition has photographs from the Thirties from the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature set against work by contemporary artists sharing Price's interest in ghosts, psychic effects and spiritualism.
Price, Britain's most famous ghost investigator, works in a lab coat among Hirst-like bell jars and cabinets but his Ghost-hunting Kit (a commercial traveller's suitcase and pile of boxes, piping, tubes) suggests a quack's travelling pack and his researchers' equipment evokes early Blue Peter. Their demonstrations exude a deadpan theatricality - an elegant woman swallowing six feet of cheesecloth for spewing out as "ectoplasm" (the manifestation of spirits), another wired to a bizarre "coat-hanger spirit", séances featuring besuited men, as well as fringe elements including a talking mongoose and "telekentic plates" marked by psychic structures.
The latter, relatives of Cy Twombly paintings, introduce a whiff of artistry and link to the main gallery where fakery is achieved through digital magic. Sadly, most (including Clare Strand's "photoism" of a young woman receding into her other world and Ben Judd's stereoscopic set-ups) lack the unselfconscious charm and edge of the early photographs. Most impressive are Florencia Durante's glowing colour photographs incorporating "celestial light" to represent "other-worldly" energies: a golden arc spanning two chairs, and a striking tryptych documenting a wretched man subjected to swirling light (spinning sparklers shot at fast speeds) which eventually envelops him.
South African photographer and performance artist Roger Ballen introduces a welcome subversive, Outsider Art wit in tableaux involving automatic writing, symbolic plastic crocodiles and live cockerels, and his own disembodied limbs, to create a chaotic, unfathomable narrative.
A patchy, oddly unsatisfying show - which could threaten judgment with ectoplasmic interference.
To 27 Jan (020 7831 1772, www.photonet.org.uk).
Seeing Is Believing
The Photographers' Gallery
Ramillies Street, W1F 7LW
