An abundance of neat little touches add to the sense that you’re definitely in a place you shouldn’t be. With Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s reimagining of Amsterdam’s red-light district, based on the area as it looked in the 1980s, tarnished bollards, a dilapidated bicycle, and an array of gutter clutter take the viewer back twenty-five years to the darkened Hoerengracht: the Whore’s Canal.
An iconic red lightbulb dangles in every doorway in a street of resin-drenched brick buildings, illuminating and framing the only reasons one would ever dare drift into such quarters - the prostitutes. They confront prospective clients at every turn, lurking in porches or hawking their wares on the street itself. Both client and viewer (voyeur?) are cast as the subordinate victim, an inversion of the typical situation with these so-called whores.

The sound of tinny radios and claustrophobic alleyways furnish the area with a sense of forced intimacy, something exaggerated by the limited size of the room. However, whilst you might wish the show were bigger, a video documentary featuring the artists accompanies the show and adds so much more. The two elements work in tandem such that despite the exhibition’s small size, its impact is anything but.

One has to admire the way the Gallery have employed their traditional material to make the transition from Virgin and Child to red-light district a smooth one. A selection of seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings at the show’s start strike just the right balance between fidelity to the Gallery’s permanent collection and sexual innuendo, contextualising and justifying the presence of such an atypical show. Kienholz: The Hoerengracht is a dark delight in the midst of this notoriously traditional institution, one that makes you wish the National Gallery would embrace the obscure more often.

Until Feb 21

DONNA MARIE HOWARD