Huge home for the Haunch

It feels as if it was conceived in a bygone age — but it is all the more magnificent for it. The Haunch of Venison, one of London’s most successful private galleries, has set up shop in the former Museum of Mankind, a huge 19th-century edifice with marble floors and staircases, wood-panelled rooms and enough stucco to please Louis XIV.

There are a few question marks hanging over this move in the current economic climate. God knows how the Haunch is going to pay the rent on its new palace, which marks a new level of market dominance for this commercial gallery. Already the only one owned by an auction house (Christie’s, whose boss, Francois Pinault has his own private museums in Venice), it is now the only one to be housed in a museum. But let’s not carp: this is a gloriously symbolic way of giving the finger to the recession. Who cares how long it works for?

The opening show, Mythologies, has a loose anthropological feel to nod to the museum’s heritage. It is a big show — on a museum scale, though not intellectually of a museum standard.

There is a panoramic range of work by famous names (Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, Keith Tyson, Bill Viola, Jannis Kounellis, Damien Hirst) and work by artists who you will be pleased to get to know. Look out for beautiful drawings and delicate sculptures of Indian artist Rina Banerjee, the sewn pictures of the South African artist Nicholas Hlobo, the fusion of photograph and watercolour of the Swiss-born Uwe Wittwer, and totally freaky voodoo sculptures from Haitian artist Jean Hérard Celeur.

There’s some eye-poppingly good art in this exhibition. Mat Collishaw’s large photographs of magnified crushed butterfly wings, full of texture, detail and pattern, reach a new painterly level in abstract photography, while the installation of scores of assemblages of crucifixes by the American duo Ed and Nancy Kienholz is a classic of trailer-trash surrealism.

It’s a shame then that the curating is so nebulous. The anthropological-mythological theme of the exhibition is a catch-all that has been done to death. The quotes on the walls from Greek philosophers, German naturalists and Italian post-structuralists are trying too hard. The glibness segues into tastelessness when, in the final room, one beholds Guy Tillim’s harrowing photographs of child soldiers from Africa — totally out of place. The Haunch is going to have to up its curatorial game if it wants to do justice to its new home.

Mythologies opens at Haunch of Venison’s new gallery at 6 Burlington Gardens, W1, tomorrow. Mon-Fri 10am-6pm (Thurs until 7pm), Sat 10am-5pm. Admission free. Information: 020 7495 5050,
www.haunchofvenison.com

Mythologies
Haunch Of Venison
New Bond Street, W1S 1ST