Northern Adventures

N.N. (1992)
What's On in London

Northern Adventures, is an exhibition organised and sponsored by, among others, British Rail and Camden Council. It takes as its unlikely inspirational theme the redevelopment of St Pancras Railway Station. The new St Pancras is earmarked to become a key terminus for the Channel Tunnel Link and a famous name in Europe travel once more. To celebrate the station's phoenix-like rise from the ashes, Camden Arts Centre were approached to commission a group of artists to create artworks on the themes of rail travel and St Pancras itself. The results can now be seen at two sites - Camden Arts Centre and on the concourse of St Pancras Station.

The show at Camden covers a variety of media - paintings, sculpture, photographs and installations and takes up all the Centre's spacious galleries. Gallery I houses the largest works, which benefit from the abundance of space. Cornella Parker's Inhaled Room - a giant mobile made from hundreds of keys suspended on wire only inches from the floor - catches and pleases the eye.

In Gallery II, Egied Simons' large black and white photographs are chillingly evocative. A cavernous underground chamber disappears into sinister blackness - you get the impression that if you walked in there you would not come out again. Similarly, his shot of nearby wasteland is unsettling - this is not a place to walk after dark. Jane Mulfinger invites you to participate in the exhibition by peering through a tiny periscope (which you must focus yourself) in order to see her installation hidden at the top of a sewage pipe.

In the small studio, Stuart Brisley displays a series of photographs of street scenes in and around St Pancras. A stray dog peers nervously around a corner. A tramp, huddled beneath coats and blankets, tries to snatch some sleep on a bench. The discarded shop dummies could be a metaphor for the areas notorious red light zone - but you had best ask a member of the judiciary about that!

Northern Adventures is on at the Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Rd, NW3, until Oct 25 and on St Pancras Station's Concourse until Nov 15.