Cathy's Art Diary

Exhibition at the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona showing the work of this Danish/Icelandic winner of the first Joan Miro Prize. The works look at the relationship between light and colour in the form of a series of installations. The first projected cubist patched of colour against a white wall showing how the colours worked with and against each other. My favourite though was the huge table of white lego where you were encouraged to play building fanciful architectural designs. There were children but mainly very intent adults. You couldn’t resist adding a staircase to something left by a previous builder. You found yourself going back to see if your design was still there and if anyone else had added to it.

Exhibition in Gallery 13 at the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona showing the work of this Japanese (?) artist. Gallery 13 looks at the work of contemporary artists and the exhibition consisted of two sets of works by Kohei Nawa. Both sets play with your eyes and distort reality. One set are guns in Perspex which gives the weapons a misty and distance appearance. The other covers familiar objects such as a shoe and a Tweetie Pie in glass balls giving them a pixilated appearance.

Annual exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery also offering an award to the best new portrait submitted that year. This years unset theme seemed to be pictures of people’s partners obviously as they are cheap and indulgent models. This included the winner of this years first prize “K” by Craig Wylie, a huge photographic quality oil painting showing every detail of the skin and clothing. There also seemed to be a marked concentration on detail and less abstract work. “Buti” by Flavia Maris Pitis became a study in hair, both human in the shape of a beard and animal in the guise of fur hat. Also “Metamorphosis” by Jose Luis Corella looked at the effect of face paint on skin becoming a study in texture, the cracking on the lips, the change in the skin with the white paint and the shine on the nails. My favourite this year was almost the first one I saw “Walter” by Oliver Jeffers, a study of a fishmonger, fish in one hand lemon in the other against a plain green background. It is one o...

Exhibition of portraits by Wyndham Lewis at the National Portrait Galley . I thought this was a really good exhibition with some super pictures but I did not warm to the artists. I must admit to a certain bias. As you may have realised fro the blog (which incidentally I’ve now managed to maintain for a year) I am a big Bloomsbury fan and Lewis fell out with them in 1914 hence I was probably predisposed to not like him! I found his rather self conscious use of self image for public use as shown by the first set of self portraits annoying. I got a real sense of someone who wanted to be someone but he didn’t really mind who and in what field. I also disliked his attach on people who had helped him in his book “The Apes of God” unpleasant. However that said this is an art show and I thought the pictures were great. There were some super drawings including one of Sacheverell Sitwell which gave a real insight into the sitters. However lets draw a veil over the hideous Virginia Woolf. My favo...