Connection and Identity at the Painted Hall

Connection and Identity, Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College

Greenwich is steeped in history and remains one of London’s most generous cultural areas. The park offers unrivalled views across the city, the Maritime Museum rewards curiosity without demanding too much of its visitors, and much of what the area has to offer is free. It is a place that encourages wandering and patience.

That generosity falters once you cross into the ticketed attractions.

Connection and Identity, an exhibition by Peter Walker housed inside the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College, runs until 25 January. The exhibition is presented as two large scale interactive artworks using light and sound. According to the Royal Museums Greenwich website, it invites visitors to contemplate what it means to be human and promises a transformative encounter between heritage and contemporary art.

In practice, the exhibition struggles to deliver on that promise.

Admission to the Royal Museums Greenwich sites ranges from £17.50 to £38 for an adult day pass. As students, we paid £8.75 to access the Old Royal Naval College, which includes entry to the Painted Hall, the Chapel, a skittles alley and a small exhibition in the Visitor Centre. We attended during a designated social media hour at the start of the day, hoping to experience the space with minimal interruption.

The Painted Hall itself is breathtaking. Painted by Sir James Thornhill between 1707 and 1726, it is a space that demands time and stillness. Its scale, symbolism and visual intensity are already overwhelming. Unfortunately, Connection and Identity often feels as though it is competing with the room rather than responding to it.

The exhibition is divided into two elements. Identity centres on illuminated sculptural hands, which visitors are invited to interact with by casting shadows. Briefly, this does encourage shared attention and curiosity, bringing people together in quiet moments of play. The interaction, however, is fleeting. Once the novelty wears off, there is little to hold the visitor in the space.

Connection takes the form of eight fabric cylinders fitted with LED strips, cycling through colours and a looping storm effect. From a distance, the installation frames the hall attractively. On closer inspection, its purpose becomes less clear. The work gestures towards connection without materially deepening it.

Large blocks of explanatory text accompany each installation, suggesting a lack of confidence in the work’s ability to communicate on its own terms. Music by David Harper is intended to accompany the pieces, though during our visit it was so quiet that its contribution was difficult to assess.

There is a certain irony in encountering an exhibition concerned with connection during a tightly managed social media hour. While restricted numbers make sense for crowd control, the experience sits uneasily alongside work intended to provoke introspection about selfhood and relationships with others.

A brief visit to the Queen’s House afterwards, largely to see the Tulip Staircase, offered a telling contrast. With only a handful of visitors present, the space felt calm and unpressured, highlighting how strongly the experience of Connection and Identity was shaped by crowd management rather than contemplation. Like the Painted Hall, it is a space that would suffer significantly when crowded.

Connection and Identity raises broader questions about how contemporary exhibitions sit within historic spaces. Here, the problem is not ambition but scale. The Painted Hall is already a complete experience. Anything placed within it needs to enhance, not interrupt, that encounter.

As a result, this exhibition is unlikely to justify the ticket price on its own. Those already visiting the Old Royal Naval College may find moments of interest, but the Painted Hall itself remains the true reason to go.