Gothic & Ghostly: Art of the Macabre

Stephenson's Gallery is opening Gothic & Ghostly: Art of the Macabre on 7 October, running through to 1 November at their Clifford Street space in York. It's a short run, so you've only got a few days to catch it. The show brings together paintings, sculptures and drawings from five artists, and it arrives just in time for the Halloween season.

York has a long-standing reputation as one of Europe's most haunted cities, and the exhibition leans into that. It draws on the gallery's Northern and Eastern European collections to look at the macabre across a few different angles: the psychological, the folkloric, the surreal and the visceral. The work comes from five artists, each bringing something different to the mix. Romanian surrealist Adrian Paiu does metaphysical dreamscapes that dissolve the laws of reality; Anthony Hodgson channels the spirit of literary Gothicism from his native Yorkshire; Scarborough artist Andrew Cheetham captures the ghosts of industrial heritage and the North Yorkshire coast; Slovakian painter Miloš Hronec fuses street art with visceral expressionism; and Peter Monkman works with a narrative-driven vision that looks at memory, identity and the darker recesses of history.

Between them, they cover a lot of ground. You've got the surreal and the folkloric sitting alongside the visceral and the psychological, and the mix of paintings, sculptures and drawings means there's more than one way to take it in. A gallery spokesperson described it as an exploration of what haunts us in our minds, our bodies and our landscapes.

It's worth keeping in mind that Stephenson's Gallery has spent over 15 years specialising in Eastern European and Northern art, so this show sits right in their wheelhouse. Gothic & Ghostly: Art of the Macabre runs from 7 October to 1 November at Stephenson's Gallery on Clifford Street, York.