Cathy's Art Diary

Disappointing exhibition at Somerset House of digital content and videos from Bjorks new album. I liked the first room which was a split screen music video with a great sound system which meant you could hear difference elements of the music at different points in the room. However I’d not realised that the most of the show was virtual reality presentations and I quickly realised that I didn’t like them! You were sat on stools so that you could spin round and appreciate the work properly but I felt too high up and I didn’t like the feel of the headset on my face. I was also unsure whether to wear my glasses or not, everything felt out of focus. All in all quite a claustrophobic experience!   Also once I’d decided I didn’t like it there was no way out so I had to stand in a room watching people slowing spinning on stools in the dark. By the time I’d suffered the virtual reality I’d rather lost my patience and not being a big Bjork fan the show had lost any engageme...

Interesting small exhibition at the Museum of London of photographs by Dick Scott-Stewart from the late 70s and early 80s looking at the London social scene. Scott-Stewart was interested in people whose activities were outside the mainstream. People with an idea of performance and a sense of belonging. There was a wonderful quote from him that “photography is just an excuse to meet interesting people”. There were super pictures of punks on the King’s Road, the closing night of the Blitz Club in 1981 with a wonderful collection of New Romantics and the audience at wrestling matches. My favourites were the pictures of women in various male dominated packs such as Rockabillies, Teddy Boys and skinheads. I liked the fact the show also included ephemera such as Scott-Stewart’s work diary from 1981. Closed on 20 September 2016  

Fantastic exhibition at the Museum of London marking the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. This show conjured up the atmosphere in London before, during and after the fire brilliantly. It was perfectly pitched to be engaging and entertaining but also informative. It was helped by the amazing objects they had to use. I loved the way in which a recreation of Pudding Lane with ghostly silhouettes at the windows but also including real objects from the time including a portable bread oven. In one section on the fire they talked about what people tried to save. Although they couldn’t guarantee all the objects shown had been in the fire they all dated from before the event and represented objects which Pepys had recording seeing people saving. There were also the remains from a shop two doors down from the bakery where it started which showed the fire damage. The section of the aftermath was fascinating too. I had not realised that the ruined buildings smoulder...

Confused exhibition at Kings College bringing together a collection of new art works based on collaborations between artists, performers, technologists and academics. I just found most of these works just too obtuse and the explanations felt heavily academic and unreadable. However there were some interesting ideas. I liked the Utopian lab where you could write a wish for stem cell research which you put in a test tube which went in an incubator but I wasn’t sure what happened after that! I also liked the idea of the choir of 50 strangers which had been brought together at Somerset House to perform a choral piece about what it’s like to live in a modern city. Best for me, but probably for the wrong reasons, was “In Our Hands” which looked at the relationship between creativity and Utopia but most importantly included a number of works by Roget Fry from the Courtauld collection. I know these works well and it was nice to see them in a different context. Closes on ...

Eclectic exhibition at Somerset House bringing together design work from 37 countries exploring the theme of Utopia with each country having its own display. There was lots to see in this show and in coming to write it up I realised I missed a section downstairs on the Embankment entrance so may have to try to pop back this week. My main criticism would be that ‘design’ seemed to be a very broad term. In some cases it seemed to have more to do with installation art or just getting ideas across than actually designing anything tangible. Highlights included the Japanese room overseen by a big inflated man floating above you and surrounded by beautiful objects by Yasuhiro Suzuki   such as a marble book with flowing water projected onto it, tiny floating compasses in the shape of Britain and Japan and rotating picture of people with eyes open and blinking. I also liked the Israeli room which showcased aid distribution pods based on a sycamore seed which could each hol...

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Modern on the life and work of Georgia O’Keefe. This was unexpectedly brilliant exhibition. I had expected room after room of big flowers bit it was much more varied and I feel in love with O’Keefe’s landscapes. From the first room I was hooked as it was decorated to recreate her first show in 1917 with grey walls, a shelf and a red curtain round the bottom of the walls. I hadn’t realised that she had started out as an abstract artist. The audio guise was very good at describing the pictures and leading you through her ideas. The biggest surprise were her amazing pictures of New York. My favourite picture in the show was one of the East River showing the river in a wonderful shade of blue and the buildings on the river banks in shades of grey. Many of her views were either looking upwards from the street or down from her hotel room. It was a nice touch that the pictures were shown alongside black and white photographs by her husband, Alfred...

Interesting installation on the River Thames by Tate Modern by Ik-Joong Kang as part of the Totally Thames Festival. This is a huge cube,   made from 500 drawings and lit from inside, acting as a memorial to the millions displaced during the Korean War from 1950-53. The commentary boards along the river told some of the stories on the drawings. On top there is a figure facing away from the bank. I’ve seen it in the day and at night and it’s a lovely addition to the river. Closes on 30 September 2016.  

Fabulous sculptural installation on the River Thames near Blackfriars as part of the London Fire 350 celebrations. It was a wonderful wooden model of what London looked like at the time of the Great Fire in 1666 based on the 1616 Visscher print. I passed it each day on the Thames Clipper and saw it grow over the course of a week. It was developed by a company called Artichoke. The idea was that it was burnt as part of the celebrations of the fire. I watched the video of it burning at it was spectacular and looked very much like the paintings of the event however it seemed such a shame to destroy such a beautiful object. Burnt on 4 September 2016 Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard  

Interesting exhibition at Flowers on Kingsland Road bringing together five international contemporary artists who investigate the form and surface of the photographic print. No I’m not too sure what that means either! I liked Alessandro Dandini De Sylva’s “Paessaggi” in which he intervenes in the process of developing Poloroid images breaking the images down into a sequence of colours and shapes. I Was amused by Tom Lovelace’s “Forms in Green” which were two felt boards from a library which had had notices on them which had stopped the green felt fading. There was an interesting red room of chemically unfixed photographs by Ryan L. Moule addressing the idea of a dissolving image. Closed on 3 September 2016  

Intriguing exhibition at Flowers on Kingsland Road looking at abstraction in contemporary photography. The show took its inspiration from a series of cloud studies from the 1920s by Alfred Stieglitz who incidentally came up in other exhibition a few days later as he was Georgia O’Keefe’s husband. As some of you may have realised I’m not that fond of abstract art but this show had some really interesting images. I loved Wang Ningde’s “Form of Light/Colour Filter for a Utopian Sky no 1” which was made of small pieces of coloured film set into a board at a right angle to it. The light filtered through it casting colour onto the white board behind. More art using film than photography! I also liked Michael Benson’s ”US Cloud Sheet” where a real image becomes abstract by the way it is photographed. Other interesting work included Letha Wilson’s pictures printed onto pleated paper to give the impression of a Venetian blind and Chris McCaw’s work made by lines burnt throug...

Fascinating exhibition at the Geffrye Musuem looking at the development and redevelopment of the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark. The first section looked at the aspirations for the estate as it was being built in the 1960s and 70s. The original tenants enjoyed the good views from the flats and modern fittings. It discussed how unexpected areas, such as the laundry rooms, became meeting points of the community. It then looked at how poor maintenance and bad design of some of the public areas led to social problems in the 1980s. It was found that the raised walkways were problem areas so these were knocked down or blocked off. However I loved the section looking at different flats and showing the good lives people had built there and how they used their flats. Finally looked at the current redevelopment looking at what the scheme wanted to achieve but also the opposition to it by some of the community. The original flats had been built to Parker Morris Standards and were...

Nice exhibition at the Geffrye Museum examining the history of servants over a four hundred year period. The museum used their period rooms and added the echo of the servants who would have been working there. Each room had a story for example the 1745 room included a travelling case to represent the high demand for servants at the time and how often they moved jobs. However it showed the case open as the implication was the lady of the house was searching the bag as a silver spoon had gone missing. The 1870 room represented a family who had recently returned from India with an Ayah for the children. The show pointed out that in the 17th century most young people left home to work in another household and this was how they learnt their place in society and how to run a home. Being a servant was seen as a respected job. However by the late 18th century servants were seen as drudges and ridiculed. I loved the section on the 20th century as I assumed there wouldn’t be mu...

Nice exhibition at All Hallows by the Tower of work by people living and working in the City of London to represent their daily experience of the buildings around them. There were some great images, many from people’s offices of views you can’t see from the street. The commentary on each picture gave the name of the person who had taken it and who they were. My favourite two were a view by Linda Wadkin of a view through a door where the sky is replaced by a view of the Gherkin and one by Robert Gray called “Two Towers” of the Tower of London and the Shard. Some of the images had been printed onto cotton sheets and put together as a ships sail in an installation by Victoria Burgher, which gave some shape and height to the exhibition. A really nice touch. Closes on 2 October 2016

Great installation at the Photographers’ Gallery by Clarisse D’Arcimoles in which she recreates an East End interior from a Victorian Photograph. D’Arcimoles recreates the scene in black and white with the colour stripped from items that would have been coloured such as the china. It was an accurate reproduction from the photograph even including a break in one of the cupboards. It let you step into the picture frame and made you think about the story behind the picture. Closes on 24 September 2016. Review Telegraph  

Self-conscious exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at how black men shape their self –image for the camera using clothes as performance, play and radical politics. I   felt the exhibition wasn’t big enough to really explore the topic. The choices of images covered a wide range of dates and countries but somehow it felt a bit random and didn’t really explain the story they were trying to tell. Good pictures of a subject but no real narrative of the topic. I loved a series from Senegal from about 1904 where men are showing their response to colonialism via their dress in formal portraits. Also the bright images by Hassan Hajgaj in frames made of tin cans. My favourite picture was by Jeffry Henson Seales “Young man in plaid” from 1991 with an elegant guy in plain tights, a large straw hat and off the shoulder jumper, a wonderfully confident image. Closes on 25 September 2016.

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of a retrospective of photographs by Terence Donovan. Alongside Brian Duffy and David Bailey , Donovan was described by Cecil Beaton as the “Terrible Three” and by Norman Parkinson as the “Black Trinity” as they appeared in the 1960s and changed the approach to fashion and portrait photography. I preferred the portrait work with a wonderful section of pictures of music heroes including a wonderful picture of Jarvis Cocker. Of the earlier work there was a great picture of Terence Stamp on location for “Far from the Madding Crowd”. A half face picture in detailed focus. Also a super one of Jimi Hendrix which was basically a pile of pattern. It was a nice touch to include a lot of ephemera such as appointment diaries in the exhibition. Donovan moved into pop promos and made the classic Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” with a backing band of super models in black dressed. Which was playing in the show. Close...