Agnieszka Gratza

Staged within the former Holy Trinity Church at One Marylebone, 'The Age of the Marvellous' is timed to coincide with the busiest week in the London contemporary art calendar. With Alyson Shotz's tall shimmering sculpture, Helix, revolving slowly round its axis to lure you in on your way to or back from the fair, this group show put together by All Visual Arts (AVA) makes the most of its elegant venue, conveniently located for Frieze.

Often claimed as the ancestors of modern museums, Renaissance and seventeenth-century 'cabinets of curiosities' or Wunderkammern, destined to house aristocratic collections of natural as well as man-made wonders, are cropping up all over the place these days; not least in contemporary art. Cabinets of curiosities as an overarching conceptual and framing device are particularly relevant for this exhibition given its emphasis on display (bell jars and antique cabinets are a recurring feature) and the hybrid nature of the artworks themselves (from machines calling to mind Renaissance automata to taxidermy and relics).

There's certainly plenty to marvel at as you make your way round the ground floor of the exhibition, theatrically partitioned off from the entrance hall by a dark veil. The items on display draw out the complexity and wondrous nature of ordinary processes such as breathing, honeycomb formation, or drips forming concentric circles on the water's surface. Mouse skulls pieced together to form a perfectly proportioned ivory-coloured sphere in a work by Alastair Mackie or bird feathers painstakingly mounted on to pleasing coiled shapes in Kate MccGwire's four pieces are unwonted and unsettling artistic materials.

Aiming to elicit strong reactions, Paul Fryer's chimpanzee nailed to a cross in what used to be a place of worship is more predictable than some of the artist's other pieces included in the show. His pallid human effigy with glass beads for eyes and white wings made of bird feathers, perched on top of a spiral wooden staircase, makes a far more chilling comment on taxidermy as a practice.

A baroque fascination with the macabre, illustrated by this and other artworks dotted around the crypt that draw on Christian symbolism, adds a further strand to 'The Age of the Marvellous'. But art, science and religion mixed together can make for a lethal cocktail, and the growing sense of queasiness gives way to wonder-fatigue by the time you've reached the end of the show, making you wish the curators had not cast their net quite so wide. Despite limited means, the ongoing Cabinets series at newly-opened SE8 gallery space in Deptford have used the same framing device more effectively by adopting a narrower focus.

Age of the Marvellous showed at the former Holy Trinity Church at One Marylebone Road from 14th 22nd October. For more information on it and on All Visual Arts, visit their website here.