London’s Underworld Unearthed: The Secret Life of the Rookery - An exhibition by Jane Palm-Gold

This engaging exhibition blends artworks, archaeology and the history of an infamous quarter at the heart of the West End.

It is presented by the artist, curator and historian Jane Palm-Gold. Hogarth’s squalid, riotous ‘Gin Lane’ was old St Giles. And back in 1751, London’s most notorious slum was a pit of degradation, poverty and crime that would appal us today.

Artist Jane Palm-Gold draws uncanny parallels between that historic parish and the locality we currently know, which has been a troubled West End backwater. The artist presents a vivid account of life in the St Giles Rookery and Seven Dials and juxtaposes the squalor brought on by the gin craze with the anti-social epidemic of today. She builds a multi-layered psychogeography that both mesmerises and disturbs.