Cathy's Art Diary

Funky installation at the Adams Plaza Bridge in Docklands by Camille Walala as part of the London Mural Festival. This works seemed to be panels of colour applied to the glass sided bridge though which the light shined though in places giving a lovely coloured pattern on the floor. It gave a weird sense of being pulled down the tunnel and I must admit I felt a bit strange as I walked down it, slightly disorientated. Reading the photo of the info panel on my phone now I realised the pattern shrinks and elongates giving a distorted effect.  Well I certainly felt it. It was like being inside a Bridget Riley stripe picture. Not unpleasant but a bit strange and very clever. Review Evening Standard

I was intrigued to see one of the statues which had been removed as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign and as I would blog a new statue thought I would blog my thoughts on one disappearing. The statue of Robert Milligan , merchant and slave trader, stood outside the Museum of London overlooking West India Docks which he helped to construct. I must admit I have never consciously noticed it but did on this visit go to see the effect of its removal. I generally feel that statutes should be left as we cannot change our history, but should have new labelling to explain who the person is, why a statue might have been erected to them in the first place and how their legacy might be viewed now. In this case slavery was a terrible thing but it won’t have gone away by eradicating references to it. It should not be lauded but equally it should not be forgotten, as it has made the world the way it is, but we should acknowledge the damage that has done and problems the effects of it stil

Fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Docklands examining a Bronze Age hoard found in Essex. The display took you from the finding of the hoard in 2018 though what it contained and why it might have been buried to how it was conserved to go on show and what more there might be to learn.   The objects seemed to be the working pieces from a metalworkers business and included ingots of copper, broken pieces, mis-fired pieces and the metal which would have dripped out of a mould. I found a lovely razor they’d found quite moving as it felt like such a personal item.   I liked the section showing each hoard and explaining four reasons why they might have been buried. I was drawn to the one suggesting that as it is late Bronze age that it was buried as a redundant material/skill with the coming of iron. Also the idea that as metalworkers were itinerant they might have buried things they had gathered in one settlement to come back and use on their next visit.   The show was well l

Novel installation in General Gordon Square in Woolwich, a wishing tree sharing messages of thanks from resident’s of the Royal Borough of Greenwich. This is one of eight trees spread through the borough sharing messages which resident’s registered online. Each tree started off as one colour representing the comments of those living closest to it but over the month of September these have been shared around the borough creating these rainbow trees. This was a lovely thing to find on my way to the hairdressers, an interesting piece of art, brightening up the square on a dull day. Closes 26 September 2020

Interesting online talk from the Victoria and Albert Museum discussing their online editorial project or blog to document objects which became important during the pandemic. Brendan Cormier, Lead Curator of Shekou Design Museum Project, and editor of the blog talked us through seven themes he had seen emerging as this project grew. I’d heard him talk briefly on Museum from Home Day back in April, so I was fascinated to see how the project had progressed. I love the way it compares current objects to those in the museum’s collections linking us to the past. He looked at how important communications had become at this time from the emergency of handwritten signs on shops to the developing government message visualised on the podiums at press conferences. He also examined how important the home had become to us and the blurring of the line between home and workplace which had only developed in the 19th century. He alluded to toilet roll hoarding in a section on how the flow of mat

More of this enjoyable series of short videos from the Metropolitan Museum filmed during lockdown highlighting recent exhibitions and specific works of art. These are emailed to members and patrons once a week, so I hope it is OK to share the links. Most take the form of a talk from the curator’s home with a powerpoint presentation. A number of the curators have picked works which are particularly poignant at this time. Episode 19 : Staircase from Cassiobury Park Conservator Mechthild Baumeister a highlight of the new British galleries, the elaborately carved wooden staircase from Cassiobury House in Hertfordshire that dates to around 1680. The staircase has been reinstalled after a major conservation project in a closer approximation of its original layout. Episode 20 : Dancing in the Dark Costume Institute conservator Glenn Petersen discussed a project from a few years ago to replace the tutu on Degas’ “Fourteen Year Old Dancer”. He compares their approach to that of other mu

Fascinating online interview as part of the Chelsea History Festival with Lucian Freud’s biographer William Feaver as he publishes Volume 2 of his life of the artist .  The talk ranged over both books to discuss Freud’s life and work as well as Feaver’s relationship with him as his chosen biographer. There were great illustrations using familiar figures and some less known ones. The interviewer was good, keeping the talk on track and asking some searching questions. I love Freud’s work but find him a difficult character but I did learn new things about him including the fact he was given two dogs as a wedding present, shared the royalties from his grandfather Sigmund’s books with his cousins and tattooed Kate Moss.

Enlightening online lecture from the National Gallery on the 16th century artist Giovanni Savolda. I have always loved the Mary Magdalene by this artist in the gallery which is a compelling of her looking out at you in a beautiful silver cloak having just found Christ’s open tomb. It captures the moment when the gardener says her name and she realises he is the risen Christ and therefore puts you the viewer standing next to him. Carlo Corsato took us though the symbolism in this work and the galleries other picture by Savolda, St Jerome in the Wilderness. Both appear to be simple works but are packed with clues as to the type of person who would be viewing them and with deeper meaning that at first sight.

Super three-day online course from Art History in Focus on art and architecture in Vienna. Led by Sian Walters over three mornings this acted like a lovely weekend break in the city. I like Sian’s friendly welcome to these online sessions and her mix of an online lecture then opening the session up with videos for the Q&A to give you some sense of the other people involved. She used good images with clear labels. A good use of Zoom. Day one gave us a brief overview of the history of the city and then a look at the highlights of the major galleries, day two concentrated on architecture at day three the important role of portraiture in the city with a focus on Klimt and the Expressionists. Most interesting was an insight into Sian’s phd thesis which looked at the paintings of the composer Schoenberg and whether his starting and stopping painted reflected changes in his music.        

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the presence of black people in collections pictures. Michael Oharjuru looked at how the presence of black people could be implicit as well as explicit in the collection. Explicit in the images themselves and he talked us though the role of the black king in various magi pictures arguing they were used as a symbol of Christianity being for all people but also as a sign of the exotic. He pointed out they are often on the edge of the picture. He also looked at   “Miss La La” by Degas, the picture of a black acrobat performing at a Paris circus, arguing that it was a picture about composition not about her, but I’d argue the same could be said of his ballerina pictures which say little about the women themselves. He argued that the implicit presence was in the source of the money which had purchased the pictures which formed the foundation of the gallery. In particular he looked at “The Raising of Lazarus” by Piombo, the

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the work of Czech photographer Jan Svoboda. These were concentrated art photographs working through repetition and focus on a particular subject. I loved them shown together but I am not sure one on its own would speak to me. They reminded me a bit of the still life paintings of Giorgio Morandi. I loved the repeated pictures of his studio table, with or without a cloth or objects. He then moved this onto using half the table or a quarter of it. It is like the focus on the table is becoming ever tighter. I also liked the way he used his own photographs within new ones, either photographing the back, the floor strewn with abandoned works or the walls of his studio with one of his pictures hung on it. Closes 20 September 2020  

Thoughtful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of the four shortlisted entries for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2020. I can sometimes find this exhibition a bit strange and leaving me asking about the boundaries between photography, art and documentary but this year I found all of them interesting and, dare I say, beautiful! Mohamed Bourouissa’s images of marginalised people were moving. I particularly like the series of shop lifters, standing in the shops they had stolen from holding up the offending items, usually such simple cheap things. His section was livened up by a Virtual Reality element. You downloaded an app then pointed your phone at pictures on the floor and 3D digital images of people appeared in the room with you. Weird but fun. Most artistic was Clare Strand’s images where she took found black and white photographic images, which she converted into data of light and shade via a grid then translated into a painting based on one square of colou

Fun art trail around East Sussex of open studios with artists showing and selling their work direct to the public. We mainly followed the rural trail of the villages around Lewes but also stayed onto some of the Newhaven trail when we got lost! We made a good start by heading to Litlington where there were four good venues around a brewery. One of the joys of trails liked this is seeing fascinating new places. I loved a Youth Hostel in the grounds of a wonderful Tudor house and a fabulous layered garden in South Heighton. Shout outs go to the wonderful paintings of Anne Magill and Susan Ashworth, the former did ethereal scenes of people and the latter beautiful, calm still lives. I loved Peter Cutherbertson’s utilitarian pottery in lovely colours. Shown here is a burnt word sculpture from Walter Bailey. His studio was open, and he was in a group show of sculpture at North Chailey. Closes 20 September 2020

Clear precise online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the female artists in their collection and why there are so few of them. Fiona Alderton led us though eight of the female artists with works at the National Gallery giving us a quick outline of their life and describing the pictures by them in the collection. We looked at Catharine Van Hemessen, Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabeth Louise Vigee le Brun, Rosa Bonheur and Berthe Morisot. I thought it was a lovely touch to also include Bridget Riley and her 2019 commission “Messengers” for the new staircase. She talked about the barriers these artists faced and how most had been encouraged by male relative who were also artists. Catharine Van Hemessen was a new find for me, a 16th century Flemish artist of small somber portraits. Checking a list online I see there are some other women artists I don’t know in the collection and I’d love to hear a second talk looking at these lesser known figure

Stunning exhibition at the Hayward Gallery looking at how artists have been inspired by trees over the last 50 years and in contemporary art. I must admit I though this show would be a bit dry and worthy but them were some wonderful pieces in it by artists I didn’t know and I found it a sea of calm and ideas. I loved Giuseppe Pepone’s sculptures taking a block of wood and stripping it away following the rings in the wood and knot holes to release a man-made tree from inside it. In a similar vein I liked Kazuo Kadonaga’s tree trunk remade from the thin slices of wood veneer it had been cut into. For once I thought two videos were the stars of the show and both were mesmeric and made you slow down and relax. Jennifer Steinkamp animation of a birch grove through the seasons condensed into three minutes was beautiful. I sat through it about three of four times to look in detail at particular season morphed into the next. Rodney Graham showed a sideways view of a huge pine tree over 6

Striking image   outside the Hayward Gallery by Zohra Opuku. This the latest in the gallery’s Billboard series where they display a large image in the public realm for a long period, often mirroring the topic of one of their exhibitions. This is a self portrait of the artist inspired by West African masquerades and the natural world. She often uses indigenous plants in her work to represent identity and belonging however in this case Rhododendron her head is a non-native plant, representing finding yourself in an environment/country which is not your own. I love the contrast of her white blouse which stands out against the dark and how she wears a necklace of shells reflecting her home. I also like the way the leaves look so beautiful yet conceal her face.

Moving outdoor exhibition around the Southbank Centre celebrating the contribution key workers and frontline staff during the pandemic. This was a mix of photographs, reproduced paintings and poems. The pictures looked striking, shown at a huge scale on the buildings. My favourite was the one shown here of Elaine, an assistant in a bakery,   by Caroline Walker but I also loved the huge picture of a nurse on the back of the Royal Festival Hall and the series on various religious groups and their responses. Most moving though were the poems. It was lovely to take a moment in the public space to stop and read them and many of them brought the reality of the pandemic into focus. I loved Jackie Kay’s poem Missing which starts “You find yourself doing the missing for them - the ones you look after as your own.” Closes in November 2020. Review Guardian

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Andy Warhol.   I am not a great Warhol fan but this show did leave me with a greater understanding and appreciation of his work. I hadn’t realised that a lot of the work does involve painting on screen prints so it was more textured than I expected and seeing the repeat screen prints made me realise how each image is subtly different due to variations in the print quality. I loved his drawings which had a simple Matisse like feel to them, expressing a person in a few lines. It was a fun idea to recreate the foil walls of the Factory which gave you a real sense of the light effects of the silver walls on the floor and how his big, bold art works would have been reflected in the walls. I came away feeling that his work had become a cliché but, seeing it in person and put in context, realised how ground breaking he was. Closes 15 November 2020 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Fascinating online lecture from the London Art History Society Online looking at the exchange of artist ideas between Europe and the new west and east in the Renaissance. Given by Ursula Weekes it explained how the Renaissance was a great period of exploration then split her talk between looking east and west. Starting with the diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire of which Gentile Bellini was part she then looked to how Vasco De Gama’s ‘discovery’ of India led to an interest in Western art in the Mughal Empire. She had some lovely examples of where Mughal artists produced works influenced by Western prints and paintings. She then looked West, which is an influence I know less about, talking about how trade and diplomatic missions brought artefacts from the Aztecs to Europe and how knowledge of the people of North America were spread via etchings. I loved her concluding picture from India in 1620 which shows an Indian hunter and his wife where the pose is based on some of the

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at how Italian early altarpieces were made. Artist and gallery educator Nick Pace guided us through the various stages of making one of these beautiful altarpieces with a gold background using the gallery’s Jacopo de Cione Coronation of the Virgin polyptych work from 1370-71 as an example. He had fascinating examples of where he had tried out the various techniques and insights into the materials and pigments used as well as how the studio would have operated. It was particularly good to get an artist’s insight into these works.

Thought provoking installation at the British Museum by Edmund de Waal. This piece looked lovely at the end of the Enlightenment Gallery and is a smooth porcelain room with over 2000 books written by people in exile from their homelands, arranged by country marked by porcelain book dividers. Within the room are also four new ceramic works by De Waal, beautiful calm pieces of ceramic arranged on shelves. You can enter the room and browse and read the books.   Around the outside are written the names of lost libraries from the Library of Alexandria to the Mosul University Library burnt in 2015. Again, for me this was a chance to see an object which I’d previously missed. It had been on show in Venice during the Biennale which I went to however we were so busy on the Arsenale and Giardini we didn’t manage to go to look for this work. So another gap filled. No end date announced. Review Evening Standard

Moving installation at the British Museum by Grayson Perry. This work was originally produced for an exhibition at the museum which I annoyingly managed to miss, so I was really pleased to get another chance to at least see this work. It is an iron boat embossed and hung with replicas of items in the museum as a memorial to all the people who made them whose names are mainly forgotten to history. The vials on the piece represent the blood, sweat and tears which went into making these valued objects. I loved that this work was shown in front of the reconstruction of the ancient Greek Nereid monument, an imposing façade. Perry’s work held it’s own and could be seen as soon as your entered the large room, although in the current one way system you had to wait to emerge from the Parthenon Frieze before you could get close and see the details. Review Evening Standard

Philosophical return to the British Museum post lockdown. Don’t worry I’m not going to blog my return to every gallery individually but thought I’d post this one as it did make me think a lot about the role of museums. The museum has only opened its ground floor at the moment and has a one-way trail around the larger sections of that area. It’s all very well organised with lots of sanitiser and signage. I was a bit shocked at £3.40 for a coffee but I guess they need to make their money somehow. However, it all feels odd. It is like the museum itself has become an exhibit labelled “Before the plague we had things called museums you could walk around and look we’ve recreated that experience for you”. Also, because it’s only ground floor and nothing has been moved it feels like edited/censored history. Egyptians and Greeks are in as is North America. Assyrians are out and not much Rome. The fact that the   Enlightenment Gallery, telling the story of how museums and categorisation d

Funky new public sculpture on the spare plinth in Trafalgar Square by Heather Phillipson. I always love seeing the new Fourth Plinth works. I hadn’t been convinced by this one when it was in the competition for new ideas back in 2017, thinking it was a bit twee and simple, however in situ I love it. It benefits from being so big and is perfectly proportioned to the plinth. I love the way you can see the ice cream realistically dripping off the base and the hidden weirdness of the fly and drone on the other side. I liked the fact the drone is broadcasting live footage over the web although I couldn’t get it work when I was there. I’m going back to try again so I can wave at myself! It gives the work an immediacy which we’ve not seen from it since the Antony Gormley piece “One & Other”, which I became slightly obsessed with, when members of the public applied to occupy the plinth for an hour. Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard