Cathy's Art Diary

Retrospective exhibition at Hauser & Wirth of work by Maria Lassnig, It was interesting to see how this artist’s work changed and developed over the years. She started off quite abstract, going through a figurative phase but reverting back to the abstract in later life. The work went through different colour pallets in these years as well as changing in style. As I’m sure you can guess I like the figurative phase from the 1970s best particularly a triple self-portrait with her sitting and standing one each side and a blurred figure in the middle of her inner self.   I did like the bright colours of some of the later work but didn’t find I related to its abstract nature. Closed on 29 April 2017. Review Times  

Lovely exhibition at the Stephen Friedman Gallery of new work by Lisa Brice. This was an interesting series of freely drawn paintings of women caught in private moments, often in-between dress and undress. They are all in a bright blue and the press release said Brice uses the paint straight from the tube, creating depth and light and shade with a single colour. The work was hung beautifully in one long line round the gallery at head height. I liked the fact some of the pictures almost appeared to be negative images of others but they were hung apart so your eye just saw them as familiar images. I loved one of a woman putting her knickers on next to small radiator as it caught such a private but everyday moment. I also liked the ones with the figures in a striped dress which often set up contrasting lines with the room around it. Closed on 22 April 2017 Review Telegraph    

Delightful exhibition at the Stephen Friedman Gallery of new work by the sculptor Stephan Balkenhol. I loved the description in the press release that Balkenhol’s focus in is on normality and he aims to present the start of a story, to present you with a figure which you then imagine a life and story for. The first room was dedicated to four small figures on plinths. Each was just about a foot tall but they showed the image and stance of people so delightfully. You felt they were all in a street together but not communicating. Carved from wood you initial view is of highly finished works but when you look closely there are splinters left so the underlying material integral to the object. I also liked his wall sculptures including two lovely portraits, carved and painted from wood. Again they were roughly cut but very real with the carving rather than the pigment giving the shape and light and shade of the face. My favourite was a larger plaque of a man in a green suit...

Interesting exhibition of collages by David Mach from his “Precious Light” series from 2011. The 10 pictures in this show were all interpretations of the King James Bible representing Bible stories and places and placing them in a contemporary world. This showing of the works is called “Alternative Facts” reflecting that collage creates a screwing or alternative version of reality as it reuses images to tell another story. Most of the pictures are big, busy and full of detail. I loved “Noah’s Ark III” with pairs of animals and the ark as a construction site. The animals which are gathering are being ignored by the people around them who are getting on with life. A few of them were calmer and more contemplative such as “Resurrection” with large bloodied feet, in a contemporary Middle Eastern city with a large hole in the ground next to the feet.. The images were striking and I was interested to see a modern look at Christian stories which were sympathetic and not snide...

Lovely exhibition of complementary work by James Dodds and Guy Taplin. James Dodds’ work was lovely large paintings of boats out of the water in a neutral space. The pictures are very detailed without being hyperreal. It was interesting to see that Dodds had been a boat maker as the work seems to show a real love of boats as objects. I particularly like his pictures of the inside of the boats as they almost take on an abstract quality. Guy Taplin’s contribution was fun driftwood sculptures of groups of birds mounted on blocks of wood with metal supports, hence his section was called “Birds on a Wire”. I loved one set of birds in flight with one large bird at the back and a convoy of five smaller ones swopping down. It had a nice sense of perspective and movement.

Striking exhibition at Flowers Gallery of large limited edition photographs by Scarlett Hooft Graffland. These all show desert and sea scenes with incredible large blue skies. They place unusual objects or people in the landscape providing a focus and a puzzle for the eye I loved one from Bolivia of a cracked salt landscape where an image of a carpet had been created on the surface of the salt by painting in the cracked areas and squaring off the edges. It really fooled the eye into thinking it was a real carpet. I also liked one of flat fishing boats pulled up on a beach which when you looked closely all had a figure lying in them with one knee raised. My favourite though was a calming image called “Resolution” of a boy standing in the sea with a model of a sailing ship. I loved the shades of blue in the sky and sea and reflection of the boy and ship in the calm sea. Closed on 29 April 2017  

Nice sales exhibition at the Redfern Gallery of British artists working since the mid-20th century. There was a wide mix of styles in this show which included paintings, sculpture and prints. I was intrigued by a John Piper large ceramic plate as I hadn’t seen ceramics by him before. It had a deep green border and two crescent shaped heads facing away from each other. I liked a lovely picture of a deserted gravel pit by Prunella Clough and a small cubist style picture in browns and greys of roof tops and telegraph poles by Keith Vaughan. My favourite pieces were some linocuts by Lil Tschudi making great use of blocked shaped and geometric patterns in real scenes. “Fixing the Wires” showed two men up a ladder mending telegraph wires which cuts across the work in striking diagonals all in lovely shades of blue.

Stunning exhibition Browse & Darby of recent sculptures, drawings and watercolours by Nick Johnson. It was the sculptures which blew me away! This gallery has quite small rooms which were dominated by these beautiful mainly life sized works made of small piece of wood patched together like a 3D jigsaw. As you walk in you are greeted by a large pig and as you turn around you face a wonderful vulture with its wing unfurled. You can almost stand between the wings and feel caressed by them. My favourite piece was a wonderful  Lurcher dog upstairs where the different slices of wood reflected the muscle structure of the animal. It was in a wonderful typical dog stance with a tender expression on its face. I want it! The watercolours and drawing were less spectacular but I did like the studies for the sculptures such as the delicate pictures of vultures.   I loved a study of a kingfisher from 6 different angles. Johnson had caught their lovely shade of blue. Clo...

Ragged exhibition at Pace London of new textile work by Richard Tuttle. I’ll admit I didn’t get these works! On first glance they looked like poorly finished applique patchwork. I had a desperate need to take them down and finish off the edging properly! I guess part of the artistic point is in the finish but I found no explanation of it and for me it distracted from any image or idea they were trying to put across. Reading the commentary it says they are looking at “materiality, space, and three-dimensionality” and are geometric abstract works. I guess they did challenge the idea of works hung an walls having to be paintings but I feel that art needs to have either meaning or beauty or craft and I’m afraid for me these had none of those. I did however like the prose poem by Tuttle which was handed out with the list of works entitled “What beauty means to me”. It might be a nice idea for an installation to have this read out in the space with the textile in. A pointer...

Thought provoking exhibition at White Cube, Masons’ Yard, of new work by Fred Tomaselli. The show consisted of two different sets of work photograms upstairs and large collage pictures based on New York Times covers downstairs. The upstairs work was intriguing with ‘portraits’ of people devised by talking to them about the drugs they have taken and representing this like a mind map including their date of birth and using the shape of the constellation of their star sign. The fact he was described in the handout as “a visual taxonomist” appealed to the librarian in me. Upstairs there were also beautiful pictures using leaves arranged on photographic paper then exposed to light. He then paints over the resulting images with very precise colourful geometric patterns. I loved these as they were so carefully painted. However the fun really started downstairs we the wonderful large scale reproductions of New York Times covers with the photographs replaced by collages and p...

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the connections between art and sexuality and gender identity from 1861, the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy, to 1967, the partial decimalisation of sex between men. There was so much fantastic work in this show I feel I could write pages on it but I’ll resist! My only criticism was that it was a bit unsure at times if it was about LBGT art or the history of LBGT life in this period. Don’t get me wrong either would be fascinating but to do the latter fully would have needed a much bigger exhibition. For example I loved seeing Noel Coward’s dressing gown but wasn’t quite sure how it fitted a show on art. Similarly one section got a bit focused on the changing role of women and how female artists broke barriers by starting to do life studies but again this seemed to belong to a different show, much as I am happy for any excuse to see the wonderful Laura Knight self-portrait, I felt this might be a subject for another great ...

Interesting light installation at Tate Britain by Cerith Wyn Evans. In the large Duveen Gallery, this work consisted of a series of sculptures in neon lights forming a drawing of light in the air. It works whichever way you approach it, with a small circle of light, followed by a series of distinct shapes and ending with a great swathe of lines. You can either walk towards the complexity or away from it. It did make me think of dance notation and patterns and the commentary confirmed that movement and dance was one of the themes. It would be interesting to see it when the space was darker and quieter as I think it would work better. The host of people heading to the Hockney exhibition currently makes this a very busy space which fights with this rather busy work. Closes on 20 August 2017 Reviews Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Nice display at the National Portrait Gallery of photographs by David Gwinnutt of a group of creatives that emerged in London in the 1980s centred on the club scene. Gwinnutt chose to photograph people in their own homes rather than the clubs they frequented. Many of them were at art college at the time as was Gwinnutt himself. I loved a picture of Derek Jarman in his flat above the Phoenix Theatre where he is shown with a naked torso and with his reflection in a mirror. I also liked one of Stephen Linard in bed smoking a cigarette in very bare surroundings. My favourite picture was one of Leigh Bowery in a big fur coat and extravagant rings. The wonderful larger than life figure was beautifully set again Star Trek wallpaper! Closes on 24 September 2017

Strange but compelling exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of curated by contemporary artist, Gillian Wearing, to showcase the work of early 20th century artist Claude Cahun and her own response to it. The wonderful discovery for me was the work of Cahun who was born Lucy Schwab and fell in love at school in England with Suzanne Malherbe, later called Marcel Moore when they both took gender neutral names. Cahun specialised in staging photographs of herself which not taken for display but as an ongoing dialogue with herself. I was fascinated by their years in occupied Jersey during the war where they wrote propaganda leaflets until they were arrested and sentence to death. I loved the photos of Cahun dancing on a wall on the Liberation of Jersey. Cahun used masks in a number of her photographs as well as staging scenarios to take pictures of. Wearing highlighted her own work which does this. It was interesting to see a series of the masks she had used and see how th...

Fabulous colourful exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of abstract portraits by Howard Hodgkin. As my readers may know normally I dislike abstract portraits and have a bit of a rant about them but I loved these! The exhibition was really enhanced by the great commentaries which really helped you to understand what you were looking at and after a while I felt confident enough to study the pictures and analyse them before reading the notes and I found I could work out what he setting, number of people and emotion of the work was. I got a lovely sense of friendship from the show with a number of the sitters appearing more than once and a real feeling of the presence of the person rather than the image of them. It was also good an explaining the development of his work and how it became more and more abstract as he developed his ideas. I loved the way he made the frame part of the picture with the picture escaping across, at times, quite ornate frames. My favourit...

Nostalgic exhibition at Kensington Palace of dresses and outfits worn by Diane, Princess of Wales. The exhibition aims to show how Diana used clothes enhance her image both within the royal family and after her split from Prince Charles however you do get overwhelmed by seeing outfits you recognise. I went round with friends and much of our time was spent reminiscing about clothes we had which were influenced by her style, yes I had a frilly blouse and ballet pump style shoes! I was fascinated to see photographs of the outfits alongside them as very often the colours in the picture were very different from the reality. Some of the clothes also looked much softer on than on a model such as the iconic tweed suit Diana wore for a photo shoot on her honeymoon. It was interesting to see how Diana changed from just using British designers when married to looking to iconic foreign designers in her later years. It was lovely to see an ornate Versace dress from a late photo sh...

Beautiful installation at the Whitechapel Gallery by Alicja Kwade. It was set in a dark rooms with a large screen showing scenes from space. Hanging in front was a large mobile of mobile phones again showing images from space via satellite. This was accompanied by a sound track reading passages from Genesis. Around the room were three bronze sculptures based on prehistoric life forms, although I didn’t realise that at the time. I found this a lovely peaceful work and spent quite a lot of time in the room, walking round, viewing it from different angles and listening to the soundtrack. My only criticism was that the voice reading the passage was quite mechanical. I suspect this was to reflect the centre piece mechanical mobile but I would have found a more normal voice more moving. Closes on 25 June 2017  

Interesting exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery featuring photography from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. The commentary defined the works chosen as by women and focusing on the female body looking at identity, experience and imagination. I found the works a bit of a mixed bag with some having such strange titles that it was hard to read the picture with that in mind but there were a number I really liked. I liked Anna Gaskell’s picture of an upside down woman with lots of petticoats and her shoes sticking up. It made me ask lots of questions about what period it was set in, why was she upside down etc. I also liked Candita Hofer’s picture of a Venetian Palazzo using mirrors at the ends of the room to create an infinite series of views of the room with the photographer herself in the mirror. My favourite picture was by Kirsten Justesen , a self-portrait of herself lying on the shelf of a wardrobe with objects around her on the other shelv...

Interesting installation at the Whitechapel Gallery by the architectural collective Assemble. This commission is a reworking of a work made as part of a community led project in Liverpool which created a landscape of fired and unfired bricks.   This version featured piles of red and grey bricks shown in white rooms with the walls covered in brick dust or clay wash. In the second room there was a table of clay objects, both finished and broke, with a film of the brick making process being shown behind. I had to check the leaflet for the meaning but now understand it’s about how places are made by people. I think I’d have liked a bit more of a sense of the people to have got this on my own.   Closed on 16 April 2017

Colourful exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery looking at the work and career of Eduardo Paolozzi. This was a visually stunning show with space given to the work even though over 250 works were included. However I found the narrative got a bit lost by trying to tell a series of stories in large spaces. It would have been helped if the labelling had been more consistent with larger labels to mark the start of a section. The leaflet was useful as a guide to what sections to look for as otherwise the story would have got very confused. I liked the wonderful cacophony of work in the downstairs gallery showing the earlier work and I loved the fact that design work was included as well as sculpture, painting, prints and collages. I was amused by the material designs and the Horrocks’ dress in Paolozzi in a yellow, black and white geometric design. I want one! Upstairs I loved the section on his work in the public space including a lovely painting of the design for the Tott...

Delightful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work for sale by Martin Parr. I have seen and loved Parr's work before with its close observation of British life in the 70s and 80s. The work came from various series by him including “Bad Weather” and “The Non-Conformists”. I am partiality fond of his pictures from around Calderdale in West Yorkshire as it’s an area I know well and he catches its eccentricities. I’m very fond of the picture I am using here of an old man balanced precariously on a step ladder to wash the window above his front door. Closes on 23 April 2017

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work by Roger Mayne. Mayne was a documentary photographer who recorded the changing face of inner city life in the 1950s and 60s. The pictures where like moments in closely observed time. I loved a picture of women in the street in their slippers and pictures of children playing on bomb sites and demolished buildings. I liked the fact the works were displayed alongside the magazines they had appeared in and the sense the show gave of his career. They had also restaged his 1964 exhibition “The British at Leisure” which had been a pioneering slide installation. I loved the fact that had used old style projectors so you still got the wonderful noise of the slides clicking into place as the carousels went round.   Closes on 11 June 2017. Review Evening Standard    

Disappointing exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for the shortlisted nominations for this annual photographic prize. I found most of this year’s shortlisted works slightly self-indulgent recording personal experiences rather than observing life. Awoiska van der Molen’s work was very tranquil and recorded her emotional response to various landscapes. I liked the fact she printed the work by herself so that she was part of the whole creative process but I found the work a bit cold and about her experience not mine. Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs had recorded a road trip from Switzerland to Mongolia drawing on memory and imagination which was displayed as an installation. I wasn’t quite sure how it all hung together and what the narrative was. Most self-indulgent but also oddly most fun was Sophie Calle’s work dealing with the deaths of her parents and cat and looking at the fragility of memory. Who can resist a picture of a cat in a coffin and a taxidermy giraffe he...

Amazing two day conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the creative process of sculpture in the Renaissance and part of the Robert H. Smith Renaissance Sculpture Programme. There was just too much too describe in detail as this was a packed two days of an academic conference. Much to my surprise it had been free including lunches and a drinks reception. The speakers came from all over the world and from British cultural organisations such as the V&A itself, the Sir John Soane Museum, the Ashmolean and many more. Sessions looked at how sculptors used drawings and models in the various stages of creating a work. We looked at highly finished commissioning drawings often preserved in lawyers’ offices as part of the contract for a work, studio sketches and wonderful drapery drawings on linen from Verrocchio’s studio possibly done on linen for longevity of studio use. For models we looked at two Michelangelo ones where he appears to have taken a black of cla...

Vibrant and colourful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by David Hockney from throughout his 60 year career. The show was arranged well with themes which mirrored the chronology of the show. I liked the emphasis on how Hockney is using different techniques and ideas to look at how time and space can be captured in two dimensions. Although the show was busy when I went the works are large so people flow through well with few bottle necks and you get a good view of the pictures If you are patient. I thought the descriptions of the pictures could have been fuller but next time I go round I’ll take the tape tour which I suspect fills in some of the gaps. In the early rooms I was fascinated by his series “Domestic Scenes” which showed gay couples in domestic scenes, normalising the relationships at a time (1963) when homosexuality was still illegal. One lovely one showed one man bathing another wearing a short pinafore and socks. The light and colour in the fourth room sh...