Cathy's Art Diary

Small advertising exhibition at the O2 on the work Adidas in designing the kit for Team GB for the Beijing Olympics and looking forward to London 2012. They have picked 30 Olympians from the main and Paralympics to focus on and photographed them in a setting which means a lot to them. Each athletic has a stand dedicated to them with a picture , a video about them and a piece of their specialised equipment. A nice touch is that as the events have gone on and the win medal pictures of those medals have been stuck on their stand. It was a nice bonus to find this exhibition on a trip to the cinema!

Exhibition on the life and work of George Barbier artist and fashion illustrator, theatre designer and protagonist of the Art deco movement, at the Museo Fortuny in Venice. One of those exhibitions that you look at and think “Oh how twee” and derivative because you’d collected illustrations like this in the 70s but then you realised this is the man who invented this style so he is ground breaking. Here was someone who set the style for a generation. The exhibition was arranged in themes looking at his theatrical work, cinema work and fashion and book illustration. The theatre designs were wonderfully silly and grand but I think the fashion illustrations were my favourite.

Stunning exhibition by Isabelle de Borchgrave of paper versions of Fortuny dresses at the Museo Fortuny in Venice. This Belgium artist has made over 80 dresses and accessories from paper and arranged them round Fortuny’s palazzo-museum to illustrate episodes in his life and reflect the significance of his work. The works gave an amazing sense of colour as well as being masterpieces of detail. Seeing them next to three real dresses it was hard to tell them apart. The exhibition gave an amazing sense of the vibrancy of the place and really brought it to life.