Cathy's Art Diary

Fabulous exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford looking at the capture of a ship in the 18 th century which was carrying tourists cargo back from their Grand Tours. It was fascination on many levels. Firstly that it was a great piece of detective work/scholarship to have traced back the story of the ship and where the cargo had gone. The work which had gone into working out what had been in each crate and them trying to trace who had owned each one was stunning. Secondly is shed light on what the Grand Tour was like, painting a picture of a number of your men through the objects and books they chose to send home. Thirdly there were just some lovely objects including a some nice portraits by Battoni and a number of prints by Piranisi who I have encountered in Edinburgh the week before!

Small exhibition at the Museum of Scotland of Edinburgh to showcase their collection of Scottish railway posters. I have always been interested in travel posters and how railways companies and others used good contemporary artists to design them. In this show I like “Waverley Station” by Brendan Neiland which was a broken up Hockneyesque image. They had both the original and the poster.  There was also a good section on the Forth Bridge . 

Exhibition of contemporary illustration for children's books at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh . It featured the work of  Alice Melvin, Cate James, Barroux, Sara Ogilvie and Bruce Ingman. My favourites were the pictures for “Mr Leon 's Paris ” by Barroux which featured a man driving yellow car round the city. I also like Alice Melvin’s “The High Street” which had detailed pictures of different types of shops. 

Fascinating exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh of works by the 18th printmaker, Piranesi. Piranesi travelled to Rome and recorded and help to restore the city. The exhibition included a view of forum as was then with an arch half buried! However he also did designs for interior decoration although few were used not used. I loved his invented images of prisons full of small horrific figures in vast impractical buildings. Real works of fantasy. Since seeing this his works also cropped up in an exhibition at the Ashmolean and I feel he will now be one of those artists that keeps appearing in unlikely places. 

A small exhibition of a selection of Old Master Paintings from the famous Bute Collection at Mount Stuart at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. It featured mainly northern European works including some lovely Dutch 17th paintings such as the de Hooch “A Disputed Reckoning”. I also really liked a Van Cleve portrait of a woman dated 1530. However I have to issue a Cuyp alert! A few years ago there was an exhibition of works by Cuyp which was basically wall to wall cows! I have quite recovered and still find his work very bland! 

Small selling exhibition of contemporary works inspired by the built and natural landscape at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh . I liked the works of Frances Walker which included a lovely triptych of Antarctica with a rich blue sea and penguins and a wonderful guessed townscape of medieval Florence by Anna Gibb showing all 150 recorded towers.

Sweet exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery of works by school children for this competition. My favourites were the simple pictures of flowers from nursery schools. They showed a real sense of colour and vibrancy. It was great to see that the exhibition had brought in lots of parents and family members to look at the work.

Fascinating exhibition of the war paintings of Sir John Lavery at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I hadn’t realised that Lavery had been a war artists in World War I and yet this is a set of artists which have always fascinated me. A lot of the pictures were of war ships off the coast of Scotland , hence the title, and they were wonderfully pale seascapes. I loved a picture of Lady Henry's Creche at Woolwich for munitions workers as I have recently moved to the Woolwich Arsenal site and imagined it might have been in my buildings, I don’t think it was! The most poignant picture was of women's army auxiliary corps tending to newly laid out graves. 

Series of installations and events on the South Bank examining how art is changing the globe. It also includes various small festivals and weekends. I just had a chance to do a quick tour of some of the outside art works around the site including “Under the baobab” a baobab tree made of fabric rings and a series of clay dwellings which I can’t find listed on the site. My favourite though was “Perspectives” a series of large children’s building blocks with letters on  which make up different words depending the direction you view them from. Looking at the web site now I realised how much I missed so I’m definitely making a return trip and will report back! 

Nice little exhibition at the National Theatre explaining how they staged the wonderful play Warhorse. I had really enjoyed the play so it was fascinating to see the mechanics behind it. One of the large horse puppets is hanging in the foyer and the cabinets show how the horses developed and how they worked. I liked an interactive display to show you how the shadow work operated and it was good to see the costumes in their distressed state. And of course the star of the show, the goose, was there. 

Street installation art all around London talking the form of telephone boxes which have been handed over to artists to turn into art works. I have only seen a few of these but it is lovely to turn a familiar corner and find a wacky reworking of such a familiar form. My favourite is of course the Big Ben as I see the original every day opposite work. The detail on the box is incredible and it is positioned in Trafalgar Square to line up visually with the original. The boxes are to mark the 40 th anniversary of Childline and will be auction to raise money for the NSPCC.