Cathy's Art Diary

Slightly disappointing exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery looking at how photography has played in defining music culture today. There were some nice examples of work but as a whole I felt the show wasn’t too sure what it was trying to show. I suspect we’ve not had enough of the century yet to spot trends.   I liked the fact it was divided on the different floors into pictures of musicians and picture of fans. Being a bit of a Lady Ga-Ga fan I liked large pictures by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Maladin for the AA Rave event. You realise that she is   blank canvas for ideas and images.   I also liked the Katy Perry mini-videos by Ryan Erin Hughes as different characters, most of which I wouldn’t have said were her! In the fans section I liked the clichéd pictures of miserable looking Morrissey fans!

Charming exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work by Shirley Baker. These pictures looked at Manchester in the mid-20th century. This was a period when the old terraced houses were being knocked down and replaced by high rise buildings but these pictures show a strange midway world where people were living amongst the demolition work before moving to the new housing. There is a real sense of an embattled community. The pictures of children were wonderful and raised a smile to your face as they seemed to use the frame of a pram as a toy or just hung round the streets. I also loved the dogs many of which seem to be related if looks were anything to go by! Baker had a wonderful eye for a subject and the framing of a shot.

Fascinating new gallery at the British Museum to display the Waddesdon Bequest. The collection was left to the museum in 1898 by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild and was collected by him and his father. It is the most magnificent collection of Renaissance objects. I was particularly struck by the jewellery which was one of the best collections which I had seen.   I was also interested in seeing the work of a female enamel artist Susanne Court. The star item was a Holy Thorn reliquary made for John, Duc de Berry and I loved the way the Lycargus Cup was displayed with different light conditions to show off the lovely translucent effect. Review Times    

Interesting exhibition at the Dicken’s Museum looking at his last unfinished novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. Over 250 solutions have been proposed to the unfinished novel in essays, films, books and more. A lovely diagram set out the two crime scenes, Cloisterham (Rochester) and London as the book had been set in real places. These gave maps showing where people lived and an outline of the characters. The exhibition also has the table from the Swiss Chalet on which he wrote the last words. There was a fascinating section on a re-enacted trail of John Jaspars held in 1914 by the Dicken’s Fellowship with G.K. Chesterton as the judge and Bernard Shaw as the foreman of the jury! It seems to have fallen apart as Chesterton held everyone in contempt of court! Other sections looked at film, stage and TV versions of the story and Howard Duffield’s collection of Drood books.    

Delightful display at the Foundling Museum looking at the effects of the Napoleonic wars on the Foundling Hospital. One case looked at two foundlings who had fought at Trafalgar one of whom, George King, had written a memoir of his life. The other case looked at Waterloo. After the battle the government had asked the hospital to waive their usual admissions policy to allow in any children whose fathers had been killed in the Battle however in the end only three women seem to have applied. I’d love to more of the story of one who said she had been ‘seduced by a soldier’ who was then killed in the battle! There is a novel in that!

Fascinating exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at the art of stucco both in its historic context and looking at contemporary work by Geoffrey Preston. Preston was invited to lead the team working on the ceilings at Uppark House following the fire. And in doing that work he reinvented the art of hand modelled plaster work. The section on that house also discussed the geometric proportions of the ceilings. I had always wondered how such elaborated work could seem so effortless and the answer seems to be its geometric underpinning. I loved seeming frames pieces of   plaster work at head height so you could see the detail of the design and finish properly in particular the Bachus and Ariadne based on a Tintoretto made   for a room at Great Fulford which the family have been restoring for three generations! He had also done modern work for a house in 2009 including beautiful birds based on drawing by C.F.Tunnicliffe.

Nice exhibition at Aspley House presenting recent research on the Titian’s there. All the pictures were of women. At one end of the room two from the house were hung with one from the Courtauld. One of the Apsley House pictures had been recently x-rayed and a version of the Courtauld picture of “Toilet of Venus” had been revealed of which two versions are known. There was also a nice feature on their Danae picture which had been to the Prado for conservation in 2013. Work done there showed it to be the picture that Philip II bought direct from the artist as opposed to the one bought by Velazquez for Philip IV which it had thought to have been. There was a nice comparison of three know versions, this one, the one in the Prado and one in Naples.

Nice exhibition at Buckingham Palace as part of this year’s summer opening looking at entertaining at the Palace. The show was spread over the whole palace but with a concentrated section about half way round. I must admit I didn’t realise this at first so missed the significance of the section on investitures! I did twig after that though! There was a good section on a royal visit and its accompanying banquet with small mocked up rooms looking at the office and admin, the kitchens, the wine cellar etc. Most interesting was the room on the dressmaker and milliner. I hadn’t realised the Queen had this in-house!   I loved the hat moulds! One room was set up for a banquet with the table in different states of preparation. Another had outfits the Queen had worn for garden parties this year but sadly not the outfit for the one I went to!

Great fun exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to mark the 80th birthday of one of its pervious directors, Sir Roy Strong. Strong worked with the photographer John Swannell over 5 years to create pictures of Strong in the guise of various historic pictures and characters. Swannell has a good eye for historic dress and detail. It was fun to stand in front of the packed display and play spot the person. I think the best one was Brunel recreating the famous photographs but I also loved the Lincoln and the Della Francesca of the Duke of Urbino. I got a real sense of Strong sense of humour and how much he must have enjoyed this project. He always looks on the verge of laughter! A lovely tribute to a great curator!

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which invites young people and contemporary artists to respond to pictures in the collection. This year it looked at portraits and biographies of people who   had connections to Camden. His is the third year of this project. As last year the most interesting thing was seeing the people who had lived and still lived in an area of London. This year included Virginia Woolf, Ed Milliband, Benedict Cumberbatch, Agatha Christie, Alan Bennett and Helena Bonham-Carter. I didn’t find the students work that interesting this year. It was a series of portraits of the children reacting to a person they had found interesting but it wasn’t always too clear who they’d chosen and I’d have liked more on who and why they had picked them. However I loved the large picture by the contemporary artist Kate Peters. The exhibition had been divided into five sections with each person being assigned a symbol and each of Peters’ pictures...

Interesting small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to mark the 150 anniversary of the birth of the poet W.B.Yeats. There were just six pictures and for me the most interesting where three from Lady Ottoline Morrell’s collection of Yeats with Sassoon and Lytton Strachey. I’m always interested in connections between people.

Small display at the National Portrait Gallery of three photographs looking at Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley was a notorious artist of the 1890s and the famous picture of him by Frederick Evans was here of his head in profile held in long languid hands.   The commentary said that Evans described Beardsley as a gargoyle! I was interested in a later picture of Beardsley in Menton where he went for his health shortly before he died. It shows him an Vuillard like room with highly patterned wall paper and a crucifix on the wall showing his conversion top Catholicism earlier that year.

Small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of works from the collection of M.H.Spielmann, an art journalist from the end of the 19th century. This was a slightly mixed collection but the highlight was a series of self-portraits of Punch cartoonists which he had commissioned and collected when writing a phistory of the magazine in 1895. A section on British sculptors of the early 20th century, again collected for a book, was enhanced by notes to tell you where you could find works by the artists in the gallery.

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of 19th and 20th century photographs donated to the museum by their Senior Special Adviser on Photographs, Terence Pepper who worked at the gallery from 1978-2013. The works were chosen by staff who had worked with him and they wrote the comments. The display talked about the style and history of photographic portraits from carte de visite to press photographs. Stand out pictures included one of Lewis Waller, a Victorian English cult actor, who still looked very dashing. I also loved one of Edward VII and his grandchildren. Pepper had championed the collection of press prints as a record of the key moments of “contextual live of the sitter”. In this genre there was a lovely picture of Lucien Freud and Lady Caroline Blackwood on their wedding day. There was also a nice section on the defining exhibitions which Pepper had curated such as the Angus McBean from 2006 and the May Ray show of 2013.

Delightful exhibition at Made in Greenwich of items mudlarked along the Thames by Nicola White alongside messages she has found in bottles. Most of the messages were from children but I liked some of the adult ones such as one which said   “Me and the love of my life are drinking wine. We are a Tower Hill London”, a real capturing of a moment! As my flat overlooks the river and I travel to work each day on the Clipper I love the river and it was fascinating to see the items which people have dropped and thrown in. I was particularly drawn to the pieces of pottery and bought a small mounted piece of Blue and White in a frame.  

Interesting exhibition at the Fan Museum looking at French fans of the late 19th and early 20th century. I had expected them all to have Art Nouveau designs but there were also a number which looked back to the Baroque. The Art Nouveau ones were the most beautiful with wonderfully painted leaves (thank you for the great glossary on the wall) and sticks with sinuous designs. I hadn’t realised that the best fans were hand painted often done by the major artists of the day. The Impressionists loved working to a fan shape. I know nothing about fans so learnt that Duvelleroy & Kees were the leading fan makers in Paris. My favourite was the Iris fan pictured painted by one of the Billotey family of fan painters. I also loved a display of advertising fans including one for the Charing Cross Hotel.

Fun water feature at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery by Bertrand Lavier. This fountain is made of colourful hoses that produce multiple jets of water that fall into a specially designed pool. It is great fun and such a simple idea. The hoses seem to be a random structure and I had a real urge to rearrange them and see what different it made! It’s lovely that it’s outside the café so you can sit and watch it.  

Brilliant but slightly scary exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery of life like sculptures by Duane Hanson. I say scary because I am a woman who was once chased by a wax work! These figures are so realistic that you expect them to move and it feels strange looking at them like you are staring at a real person. I think it’s the detail and the quality of the skin tone which is so amazing. The figures were just displayed in the open gallery without ropes so they inhabit the same space as the viewer and at times it was hard to tell who the visitors were as you’ll see from the attached photo. My favourite was the cowboy who lounged against the wall as you walked in.   I also loved the older couple sitting at the back of the gallery happy in their own company. Review Times  

Slightly messy temporary pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery designed this year by Selgascano. I say messy because some of the sections were made of plastic ribbons threaded around the aluminium frame along with sheets of iridescent plastic covering the frame. It was effective as you walked round and has a maze like feeling but it looked a bit unfinished from the outside. I think it might look better of an evening as the effect of light from inside kicks in. Reviews Guardian Telegraph  

Nice exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of paintings my Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The pictures were large imagined pictures of people often with a dark undefined background. I loved one “4am Friday” where the figure dissolves into the background which sets off the white stripes of his t-shirt. The pictures had a Velazquez feel with the loose brush work and dark palette. The first picture you seen is a wonderful almost life sized back of a dancer which is so strong. I loved one of a man with a parrot. He is so dark and almost monotone then the parrot is a blaze of colour.   My favourite though is a figure of a man sitting in a red dressing gown with had a real feeling of Sergeant’s “Doctor Pozzi” which was in the recent National Portrait Gallery show. Review Times

Lovely small exhibition at Kensington Palace looking at clothes worn by the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana to show changing styles and fashion conventions for the Royal family. The emphasis was obviously on clothes for official events with an emphasis on evening wear. The clothes were shown in a case you could walk round to see them from all angels or in mirror backed cases. There were then framed magazine covers on the walls and videos in some of the rooms of films of fashion shows on the times and of the ladies in the clothes. The first room of the Queen’s 1950s evening dresses for state occasions was very classic with the most amazing embroidery. It was nice to have Princess Margaret so well represented as she was quite a style icon at the time and was able to be more fashionable than the Queen. The Diana room was strange as I remember her clothes so well and loved them but 35 years on they do look quite dated. What a strange shape some of them were wi...

Excellent little travelling exhibition currently at Charing Cross Station looking at the railways in the First World War. In a small but well-presented stand the exhibition covered every aspect you could think of from the men who went to war, the women who worked in their place, their role in transporting troops to the front and sadly also back in ambulance trains.   There were a few original items in cases but mainly the story was told with text and photographs. There were features on two men who won the Victoria Cross, Ernest Sykes and Wilfred Wood, both of whom survived and had steam trains named after them. One incident I’d not known about was Britain’s worst railway disaster was in 1915 at Quintinshill near Gretna where 225 people were killed including Royal Scots soldiers on their way to the Gallipoli campaign.

Delightful exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work of Eric Ravilious. The show was divided into the subject matter of the pictures starting with machinery but also looking at landscape, interiors and seascapes. I do love and know Ravilious's work well so I’m not sure I learnt a lot from the show but there were some lovely works and it’s always good to revisit them. Favourite pieces included a picture of a farmhouse bedroom that was Van Gogh meets Vuillard, full of pattern and yet a picture of ordinary objects. Also a lovely picture of Edward Bawden working in his studio from 1930. I liked the fact it didn’t concentrate on the war pictures as a separate subject but wove them into the other subjects. I loved the first picture in his series of submarine lithographs which included his own hand drawing a picture. Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Great sculpture trail round the City of London. I will admit I got a bit lost, partly because Google Maps decided I was somewhere completely different to where I was, so I did miss a few of the works! However once I got my bearings it was   good to go round bits of the city I’d not been to before and the sculpture was a good excuse for a walk! The most dramatic work was Damian Hirst’s “Charity” a huge version of a charity collection box in the shape of a disable child which I remember from my childhood. It had the back broken open as if the money had been stolen. Set against the Gherkin in quite a small lane this was the star of the show. I also liked “Carson, Emma, Takashi, Zezi, Nia” by   Tomoaki Suzuki, small but beautifully detailed sculptures of the people who might be in the area and looking at them. I’d like to see more by this artist but displayed at a height where you could look at the detail, these were shown on the ground so it was easy to miss the...

Interesting exhibition at The Wilson, Cheltenham’s Art Gallery & Museum, curated by designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby looking at lesser known moments in the production process of everyday objects. The displays looked at items interrupted mid-production such as tennis balls in the attached picture and pencils. It showed the mid-point and the finished object. The largest exhibit was the raw front of a tube train! There were great videos on how the objects were made which I always find fascinating.    

Interesting exhibition in the King’s College, Inigo Rooms, at Somerset House celebrating the centenary of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum looking at their collection and plans for the future. There were some stunning pictures from artists I knew and some new finds. Of course I fell for the Modernism room with works by Gertler, Bomberg and Rosenberg. I also liked a work by Clare Winsten, a female member of that group who I’d not come across before. It was also fantastic to see Gertler’s Roundabout in a different context. It had been owned by the gallery but they had to sell it to the Tate to raise money. Another find in the earlier room were two sets of brother and sister artists firstly Simeon Solomon, a Pre-Raphaelite who was prosecuted for being gay and his sister Rebecca and secondly Solomon Joseph Solomon who was a pioneer of camouflage techniques in the First World War and his sister Lily who was an artist and suffragette. There was also a room on new acquisitions...

Loud exhibition at Somerset House focusing on the music and style of the 70s/80s rock group, The Jam. Although in quite a small space this exhibition was really well laid out and stuffed with memorabilia from the band and fans. I’d always love the band and their intelligent music but didn’t really know that much about them. I’d not realised Paul Weller’s father had managed them for years and I loved the early posters and fliers for gigs in odd venues like greyhound racetracks. One room was devoted to their look and how it was copied by fans. I must admit I’d not realised at the time how iconic this was, I’d just thought that’s how boys dressed! I’d not thought they were influenced by a band, more the other way round! The clothes were nicely displayed with some of them in a flight case. The show was full of dazed men of about my age reliving their youth! There was a small queue getting each other to take their photo in from of a reproduction of the graffiti from t...

Delightful exhibition at Tate Britain of works on paper by the Pre-Raphaelite artists. This wasn’t over curated and just showed nice pieces which aren’t often seen with a little bit of commentary on who the artists were. Highlights included a lovely picture of Fanny Cornforth, a lovely sketch by Millais done in a church in Scotland when sheltering from the rain and a portrait of F.G. Stephens by Ford Maddox Brown as a study for the figure of Christ in “Washing Peter’s Feet”. A particular highlight was some watercolours by Lizzie Siddall next to a Rossetti of her.

Small exhibition at Tate Britain which asked four emerging artist to look at the effects of the internet by comparing attempts to quantify the wealth of data to tangible objects. I loved Eloise Hawse’s film of her father being scanned alongside the animation it produces. It was amusing because he was scanned fully dressed and she showed it with a 3D print out of his shoes. It was an interesting intense but detached view of someone she loves, or that’s how I read it. I also liked Charlotte Prodger’s full sized print of the x-ray of a lorry at customs! Yurl Pattison presented a film of a formed defence centre which is now used as a datacentre. It was shown imagined online posting from a 2030 time traveller. I didn’t really understand Katina Palmer’s Island of Portland with three photos and an audio story. It was interesting but I didn’t see how it fit the brief.

Rather dry but still interesting exhibition at Tate Britain looking at history painting in Britain both in its heyday of the 18th and 19th centuries when it was considered the highest form of art and in contemporary art. The show was display by type of history as well as having a room on how it has been used in a radical way and an overview of the history of the form. That room was fascinating as it took you from   Benjamin West’s, though Millais’ hideously kitsch “Boyhood of Raleigh”, an   Alma Tadema, a Sickert based on a photograph produced within days of the event and ended with a Steve McQueen photograph of a lynching tree. The British history room included the amazing “Amy Robsart”, a huge picture which was very popular when it was first exhibited in 1877 but is now forgotten. It did make me think about what is popular now and how they’ll be considered in the future. I loved the section on the documentary on the re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave fr...

Interesting exhibition at Tate Britain combining archive material with a film taken at locations   mentioned in that   material which looks at how sculpture appear “before the camera as an extension of the eye”   devised by Charlotte Moth. This was a lovely sister show to the Hepworth as most of the work featured was by her and the archive material all related to her. I wish I’d had more time to give this and had read the handy leaflet while I was there. At first appearance it looked like rather unexplained archive displays with a film in the middle. It just needed something to lead you and catch you attention.   This room is an interesting doughnut shape is used a lot for excellent archive displays but somehow it’s not very welcoming and engaging. I’m not too sure what to suggest, maybe putting   the introduction board outside the room or a bit more colour.

Beautiful exhibition at Tate Britain focusing on the life and work of Barbara Hepworth. This was a beautifully displayed show with the sculptures given lots of space to see them from all sides and displayed against lovely different shades of blue in each room. Farrow and Ball eat your heart out! I loved the room on the studio she shared with Ben Nicholson which showed how they worked together and how their work became a dialogue which was mirrored in the joint shows they held in this period. I loved the quote “work and living are the same thing” rather Bloomsbury! The section on international modernism was fascinating as I’d never thought about the influx of refugees from Nazi Europe into the art world and the effect it had in boosting the modernist movement. I loved a photo of Mondrian at a nursery tea! I particularly like the wooden egg shaped works with the insides painted in white or blue and with threads stretched across them. This exhibition gave me a new u...

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery in this annual series which invites schools to respond to a picture in the gallery. This year’s picture was “St Michael Triumphant over the Devil with Donor” by Bartolome Bermejo. It’s a picture I’m fond of byt it didn’t seem to work so well as other pictures have done with the children. I loved last year’s look at Seurat’s “The Bathers”.   I suspect the hope had been that children would respond to the monster in it but surprisingly few schools looked at that aspect. An example of stretching the theme was one school which had looked at how St Michael was acting like a superhero in the picture so who were the children’s super heroes.   Another looked at the history of the silk route which I’d not really got from the picture at all. I did like William Barnes Primary Schools take on the reflection of the city in the breast plate and had done repetitive rooftop shapes to make patterns based on the shape of the roof o...

Strange exhibition at the National Gallery which commissioned new music and sound installations in response to pictures in the gallery. As you may know I have issues about sound and how it is presented in galleries but this was done well except for the first piece which was the quietest but was shown in the only gallery which wasn’t sound proofed so you could hear the noise of the gallery as well as the quiet bird song. Maybe this was a deliberate move to compare the background noise you would normally hear with the picture to that which had been recorded but I suspect not! I wasn’t convinced by some of the pieces. The classical music works were nice but I’d have almost rather have heard music contemporary with the picture. It didn’t add anything for me. I want to go back again having now watched the video about the show and I was intrigued by it but I’m not sure what the music added. I particularly want to go back to listen to Jamie XX’s pointillist piece to go with ...