Cathy's Art Diary

Disappointing exhibition at the Information Centre of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich looking at the work of Sir Christopher Wren. I say disappointing because it turned out to be poorly explained projects by first year architecture students at the University of Greenwich. I  assumed they had been tasked with studying a spire of a London church by Wren, producing architectural drawings and building a model in cardboard. Few of the drawings mentioned which church was involved and none of the models were labelled. A bit more explanation would have elevated it above show and tell. More interesting was a project by Captivate, a spatial modelling research group, who have built a fly through animation of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, including the hospital buildings by Wren. Closed 3 September 2023

Interesting exhibition in the undercroft of the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College of photographs by Hamish MacPherson as part of the Wren300 celebrations. The photographs were atmospheric portraits of contemporary people involved in aspects of science and architecture pioneered by Sir Christopher Wren. A useful leaflet told you about the sitter and the aspect of Wrens work they represented. The pictures had an ethereal quality and were created using a flatbed scanner, which creates an intriguing and mysterious quality and as the commentary said gave the impression the sitters also “possess their own shifting legacies”. They made the research relevant to today while illuminating areas of Wrens interests which I hadn’t known about before such as the fact he developed two finger spelling alphabets for deaf people. No closing date given.

Interesting re-creation at the Guildhall Art Gallery of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s working ‘office’. This exhibition is part of the Wren300 celebrations and was a fun idea but I didn’t think it quite came off. I will admit I missed the section on the upper level which looked dull but may have given more information than was in the room itself. The room has been decorated in Jacobean colours and the walls were covered in facsimiles of Wrens drawings and drawings by modern architects of St Paul’s and other city buildings. There was also a table of modern and Wren-era tools. There was a fun model of a cross section of the dome centring the room which was effective.   It was nice to see a new ‘map’ by Adam Dant describing Wren’s life and times in the City. His work keeps popping up. Closes 15 October 2023

Interesting online lecture from the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at how Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt London after the Great Fire of London in the 17th century. Janet Gough, author of a new book on Wren in London, took us through the life of Wren and how the rebuilding of London became his major project from The Monument started just five years after the fire. She took us through some of the 52 churches he rebuilt showing us how the established a new design for the Anglican church in England using tiers of windows to bring in natural light and placing the pulpit where all the congregation could see it and hear what was being said. She then moved on to the design of St Paul’s Cathedral bringing together Renaissance and Gothic ideals to develop a new style. She talked about the contemporary designers he used for the interiors from Grinling Gibbons woodwork and the painting of the dome by Sir James Thornhill. She ended by looking at the Phoenix by Ciaus Gabriel Cibber on the sout...