Cathy's Art Diary

Disappointing installation in the courtyard of Somerset House by Dana-Fiona Armour. Photographs I'd seen advertising the work made it look larger and gave the impression that you could walk through it. In reality I found it a bit small for the space and as the fountains had become part of the work you couldn't walk within the work unless you were a small intrepid child. The works had lights inside which were the interactive part but in daylight these were too pale. I was also disappointed that the interaction wasn't with the people and space around it but in response to 50 years of oceanographic data from the around the coast however without knowing what that data was and what year it represented it felt meaningless. The sculpture itself is derived from an endangered sea snake. I am all for art which reflects scientific findings but the link needs to be more obvious. The work invited you to reflect on "the shifting ecologies which sustain life on Earth" but...

Engaging exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on a portrait of a horse called Scrub by George Stubbs which has been borrowed from a private collection. The wonderful portrait strikes you as you enter the room and you can't help but smile. The level of detail is extraordinary and it feels like he is inviting you to sit down and spend time with him. He was commissioned by the same patron as the famous Whistlejacket who dominates one of the main vistas of the gallery and I like to think that at night they meet up somewhere and catch up on old times. Shown with the portrait are two horse projects by Stubbs , an book on the anatomy of the horse based on dissections which he did and drew at every stage, and a commission to paint all the major racing horses of the previous 50 years. There were two works from the series in the show and you couldn’t help but smile again at Dungannon with his friend, a lamb. Of course I had to go and say hello to Whistlejacket afterwards so he ...

Charming video installation at Outernet by Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell. I must admit I usually walk past Outernet without stopping as I find immersive art a bit disorientating but this one was so calm and beautiful I stopped and watched. The work put you into a series of ruined buildings which were gradually being taken over by lush vegetation. You even had a projection of the ceiling of the room you were in on the top of the space. According to the blurb the artists have travelled the world over the last decade exploring and photographing ruins. When they return to their studio, they add digitally sculpted vegetation with the idea of bringing life back to the rooms. Closes 13 March 2026

Badly designed exhibition at Tate Modern presenting work by Tracey Emin over 40 years. I found the show badly arranged and claustrophobic. There are video installations on the main walk through not inside rooms so the pathway fills up and if you don’t want to stand and watch you have to push through. A lot of the art is quite wordy so people stand for ages trying to make out the handwriting. There are no information boards just labels. Are we meant to use an app instead? Please make that clear if that is correct? It assumed people already knew Emin’s story, which I did, but if you didn’t you might feel quite lost and the work could feel random. I wonder if it’s deliberate in a show full of angst to try to induce anxiety. I lasted 20 minutes. I’m not a great fan of Emin’s work as I find it quite introspective but often individual pieces can be very moving and these shine through. It was lovely to see the bed again and I loved a crucifixion painting. I liked the quilts but in th...

Interesting online lecture from the Wallace Collections discussing how Caravaggio’s “Victorious Cupid” came to be in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Neil McGregor, former director of the National Gallery and now chair of the advisory board of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, was interviewed by Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection to mark the Wallace Collections showing the painting, on loan from the Berlin gallery. They began by talking about the picture itself with Bray sharing that the gallery was not allowed a poster of the painting for the show unless they put the label over the boys genitals. They talked about the Giustiniani brothers who commissioned the work and about other works by Caravaggio which they owned. They then discussed hat happened to the collection when it was sold in Paris in 1812 and how it was shown there for a number of years almost as a public show and how it influenced French artists of the time. We then went into a rather complex discussion of ...

Clear and useful online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on Stubbs marking the loan of a portrait of a horse called Scrub. Mary McMahon, curator of the show, introduced us to Scrub and set him in the context of Stubbs career. She took us through the artists career and in particular his paintings, or as she argued portraits of horses. The painting is shown with examples from two of his other projects on horses, an anatomical study for which he dissected horses and drew the structure of their muscles and skeleton, and an attempt to paint all the major thoroughbred horses of the period called “The Turf Project”. I went to the show a few days later and found this to have been an excellent introduction to the show and it meant I got a lot more from the display.