Cathy's Art Diary

Wonderful video installation at the Imperial War Museum by John Akomfrah representing the Africans who fought and took part in the First World War. Shown over three screens it mixed archive material and a newly shot narrative featuring a variety of the soldiers often show against a desert like backdrop surrounded by the flags of the nations involved. It memorialised both soldiers and porters. I’m going to have my usual video moan in that this work was 75 minutes long! A bit longer than you want to spend on one piece in an exhibition. However as this was so lovely I would like to go back and watch the whole thing. It would really help to advertise the start times so you could watch it properly from beginning to end rather than dipping in in the middle which I found a bit confusing, Closes on 31 March 2018

Innovative installation at the Imperial War Museum looking at remembrance rituals. Created by 59 Productions you walked through the three parts of this installation. You start in a video installation with the illusionistic effect of sands running out of a timer and an idea of the Hall of Remembrance that was planned but never completed. You then walk along a corridor and look into a very dark space where various minutes silence were played. I thought this was such a good idea. Each one included the preamble or end of the silence and of course none of them were actually silent. I loved the one from a football match which ended with a huge cheer.   The final room was white with the words from various memorials on the wall. All in all a very thoughtful piece. Closes on 31 March 2019

Moving installation at the Imperial War Museum of recordings of people’s memories of Armistice Day. These were played in a darkened room with pillars in the middle and neon strips on the walls. The light levels rose gradually during the sequence of recordings. The voices came from different speakers around the room and were in a wonderful variety of accents. The sound coming from around the room gave the whole thing a sense of life and movement. The stories were poignant and moving. I loved the chap who said he’d been marching to the front when they were met my other soldiers coming towards them announcing the war was over. In a very matter of fact voice he said “so we came back and buried our dead.” Also the nurse who saw five of her charges die on 11 November 1918 and couldn’t view it as a happy day. At the end there was a chap who’d lost a leg and was given an artificial one and told he could go now. He set off on a mile’s walk to a bus with his back pack and a poorly fi

Fascinating exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at the end of the First War and the effects of it via the museum’s photographic collection. The show was nicely themed by looking at the effect on individuals, society and the world. The individuals covered the process of demobilisation and how the soldiers adapted back to civilian life. It looked at how the injured both in body and mind were helped or left to cope on their own. A large section looked at the effect of the end of the war on the people whose land was fought over with pictures of people returning to devastated farms and houses, an aspect of the war we tend to forget in this country. The society section looked at social changes with the end of the war such as worker rights and votes for women. It also looked at the decisions that were made around the rebuilding of Ypres with a fascinating set of pictures of the damage that were used to plan the reconstruction. Finally the show focused on the peace t

Beautiful installation at the Imperial War Museum of the ceramic poppies which started their journey at the Tower of London. It was wonderful to see these poppies by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper again. The Weeping Window element of the original installation worked really well at the museum starting from a window in the rotunda and falling down the classical arcade. They made you look at the architecture of the building with a fresh eye as well as coming home and looking at my individual poppy again. It was touching to see a junior school queuing up for each class to have their photo taken in front of the display and for their teacher to explain the meaning of the poppy to them. Here’s hoping them remember. Closed 18 November 2018

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum curated by Ian Hislop using the collection to show how personal expression can change society and drive progress. It was fascinating to see how the same principles have been used by different peoples throughout the ages such as defacing the coinage, slandering your enemies, wearing specific items to show allegiance and the idea of burying objects. I found the ancient pieces most touching as they showed that people don’t really change. Items I loved included a builder’s rude picture from the pyramid builders of Egypt and from the same period a papyrus of animals taking on human roles as a parody of the art of the time. I also liked a salacious carving of Cleopatra and Anthony a boat probably commissioned by Octavian! I loved a censored version of the Decameron in which the owner Marco Dotta had rewritten all the dirty bits. Oh dear it looks like I was attached to the smut in the show rather than the political comment!   T

Moving video at the Foundling Museum directed by Lily Cole. The film recreated the original process for children entering the Foundling Hospital set in modern Liverpool. It was based on two original petitions by Black Peggy and Mary Ann Carr and took you though the interview and the lottery of picking coloured balls from a bag to determine which children would be accepted. Seeing modern women and children go through this emphasises the pathos of the events and makes them less distant and historic and also makes you think about what happens to children in similar circumstances now. From a practical point of view I loved the fact the museum advertised when the showings would start and how long they would last which gave you the chance to start watching from the beginning. Other museums and galleries please note! Closes on 2 December 2018 Review Guardian

Fabulous exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at the contribution of women to the Foundling Hospital. In the downstairs gallery the show looked at the women who had worked at or for the hospital. The stories were told with excellent information boards and commentaries as well as fantastic archive material. From the original founders who looked to their wives who were used to running big houses for advice on how to run the hospital, through the wet nurses and women in rural areas who fostered the babies, inspectors of those foster parents, the servants who kept the hospital running and finally the girls and women who sang in the famous chapel choir. The show was packed with fascinating stories and a huge amount of research had obviously gone into tracing the lives of these women. Anyone one of the stories could have been a novel. I loved Esther Yargrove, the 40th orphan to enter the hospital who stayed and worked her way through the organisation to running the worksho

Dark exhibition at Pace looking at the career of Adam Pendleton. I say dark because the work was black and white. Pendleton calls his work “Black Dada” an examination of blackness, abstraction and the avant-garde. The work is based on found images. I liked two large groups of framed transparencies called “Our Ideas #2” and “Our Ideas #3” based on collages using found images. Some of the work is more abstract than others but in others you can see the original images. They looked very striking together.   Closed on 9 November 2018

Touching exhibition at the Royal Academy by Bob and Roberta Smith looking at the relationship his mother Deirdre Borlase had with the Academy and how that reflected the experiences of other women. Bob and Roberta Smith is the pseudonym of the artist Patrick Brill RA and his mother, Deirdre Borlase, who had found that if she submitted work under an initial rather than her first name it was more likely to be accepted to the Summer Exhibition as it was assumed the work was by a man. There were some lovely works by her in this show such as a still life of a kitchen cabinet and gasometers in Battersea. I loved Smith’s funky labels for the work. As well as showing his mother’s work there were new works based on things Smith has learnt from her and on her life mainly paintings of words. He also looked at the two female founders of the Academy, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, in two sculptures. Jessica Voorsanger, Smith’s wife and Etta Voorsanger-Brill, his daughter also contrib

Strange show at the Royal Academy of work by RA graduate Sara Knowland and current third year student Frances Drayson. The title of the show refers to Russian composer Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain which they use as a prompt to cue to explore their interest in representation of gender, modes of expression and “mutable borders between the natural and the synthetic”. I’m sure you can guess from my quotes marks that I didn’t really understand this. The show consisted of photographs and paintings of witch like figures and a floor installation of red Gothic arches. I did like the arches but wasn’t sure how the rest worked together. Sorry I tried! Closed on 18 November 2018

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy the art of islands of the Pacific Ocean. The show was based on the premise that Captain Cook embarked from Plymouth on the first of his journeys across the Pacific Ocean 250 years ago just a few months before the Royal Academy was founded, both events coming from the ideas of the Enlightenment. There were some lovely items in the show but I’m afraid I just couldn’t engage with it. It was well themed and some interesting points were made about the contact between islands and sharing of artistic traditions but somehow it just didn’t do it for me. I’m ashamed to say the highlight of the show for me was that someone was   playing the Red Piano by Michael Parekowhai in 2011 however it amused me when I realised we were getting an Abba medley which was followed by the theme from Top Cat! My favourite piece was the amazing video installation by Lisa Reihana called “The Pursuit of Venus (Infected)”. It mimicked an expensive wall paper

Striking installation in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of a 20 foot house by Cornelia Parker. The house, a typical 19th century American style painted red, dominates the space not only as you come into the courtyard but also as you look across Piccadilly. I liked the detail of it and the fact the back showed the supporting structure so there was a sense of realism and artifice in the piece. Reading the commentary the house is based on the Bates Motel in Psycho which in turn is based on “House by the Railroad” by Edward Hopper. The house is scaled down but built from components of a dismantled American red barn putting it in the realm of art based on found art. Closing date n/a

Magical evening at Somerset House to mark the opening of the Good Grief, Charlie Brown exhibition bringing together Jean Schultz, Charles Schulz’s widow and contemporary artist Andy Holden. This was a fascinating discussion looking at the legacy of the Peanuts cartoons and the work of the museum which Jean set up with Charles and still runs. It was interesting to learn about how Charles worked and to see some great slides of the cartoons. She talked about the effect of the films on the work and its legacy. Andy Holden talked about how he was inspired by the cartoons and the work he has in the exhibition in homage to them. I fascinated to hear his riff on the zigzags on Charlie   Brown’s t-shirt and what they had meant to him. Such a good idea to bring these two speakers together and I can’t want to go and see the exhibition.

Colourful exhibition at Somerset House from three bodies of work by Athi-Patra Ruga. OK I’m going to admit it I’m not sure I understood this exhibition but I did like it. I have just found an online booklet so I’m a bit clearer but I’m still not too sure. I get that it challenges colonial views of Africa and perceptions of women and homosexuality in Africa but don’t ask me the details. I liked the intricate tapestries which has a slight feel of Grayson Perry. They were bright and include vignettes brought together into a story. I liked that they were shown with large photos on similar themes and you can see some of the balloon covered character in the pictures in the textiles. I also liked a full sized figure covered in beads and bling which oddly reminded me of the Emancipation Statue in Barbados. Closes 6 January 2018

Video installation at the Whitechapel Gallery recreating an event at the gallery in 1973. I was more interested in the original event in this show that the video and installation by Ulla Von Brandenburg. The installation was a strange seating structure like a landscape but I felt it lost it’s impact in the sign that you should only site on the first few layers and take your shoes off. The event was when five hundred children were invited to the gallery to view a display of confectionery from around Europe but they overwhelmed the guard and ate all the displays! How did I now know about this? I’d have been 11 was it not on Blue Peter or Newsround? The show was accompanied by a mock newspaper with reviews of the original show and reports of riot. I’ve only just read it and realised the show was the part of the Fanfare for Europe event in which cultural organisations in London marked the UK’s entry into the European Union. The video should have made more of this as it adds

Interesting exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery examining the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the gallery in 1958. The show made good use of archive material to look back at this ground breaking exhibition which was the first to show Pollock’s work in the UK and provoked bewilderment and excitement. The show was designed by architect Trevor Dannatt who transformed the gallery into a white cube and used breezeblock walls to divide up the space and give additional hanging space. The catalyst for the show was the loan of “Summertime: Number 9A” to the gallery which had appeared sixty years ago in the original show. It was shown in a space which tried to recreate the gallery by showing it next to a full sized picture of the show with the picture in it at right angles to the picture and a reworking of the way draped material was used to transform the ceiling of the gallery. Closes 24 March 2018

Weird exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery combining 19th century scientific models and contemporary pieces by Salvatore Arancio. The scientific works were collected by George Loudon, the Dutch art collector. They have lost their original meaning but work as weird objects in their own right and make a weird and wonderful display. The gallery asked the artists Salvatore Arancio to select works from the collection and respond to them. I loved his ceramics and how they interact with the other objects around them. I didn’t get a chance to watch his film as you had to watch with headphones and it was busy. I loved how this show brings old objects back to life and by putting them with contemporary art makes them into art objects in their own right. Closes 6 January 2019 Reviews   Times Guardian

Quirky exhibition   at the Whitechapel Gallery of work by contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. From the first room, where they had turned the space into a disused swimming pool, I loved this! The swimming pool was so realistic even down to the earth at the bottom of pool and peeling paint. The changing room at the side looked perfectly normal till you looked closely and found there were hinges and handles on both sides of the door. I loved the approach of having no labels on the walls but giving you a good booklet with the commentaries in which were well written and informative. This made you look at the work and think about it before reading about it. Heading upstairs you found smaller works from the last ten years. If you don’t think you know Elmgreen and Dragset’s work they did the boy on a rocking horse installation for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square and these works were similar, being figurative and symbolic in style. “One Day” was a scul

Fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Docklands looking at the rituals around death and burial in Roman London. The displays round the edge looked in general at the rituals while in the centre twenty seven skeletons and cremated remains highlighted the points already raised. The remains were shown with their grave goods and it was fascinating to read that you find less gave goods in London than other parts of the empire as the population was quite transitory. Sounds a bit like now too. The research work done on the remains was fascinating. Most of the people showed signs of malnourishment despite the probably expense their funerals. It easy to be pulled in to viewing the bodies purely as museum exhibitions and sobering to stop and think of them as real people who lived in the same city as me. I found the show very moving. The star of the show was a sarcophagus discovered in Southwark in 2017. There was a super video with it showing its discovery, how it was opened an

Interesting exhibition at the National Theatre looking at the role of the theatre in the movement to win the vote for women. The show was mainly information boards and archive photographs. There was good use made of quotes and I was amazed to find that there had been over 100 suffrage plays written between 1908 and 1914. I liked the incorporation in the display of a prison cell to represent the role of the theatre at suffrage fairs including re-enacting prison life. I loved a hand bill of the entertainments at the fair. The show threw up lots of fascinating stories and people you want to find out more about. Actress Muriel Matters flew over London in an airship dropping leaflets and Edith Garrud was known as the jujitsu suffragette who taught self-defence to the suffragettes and set up and trained body guards for the leaders. The Actress Franchise League also campaigned for more opportunities for women in the theatre, the end to unsafe working conditions and the end to

Moving exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall of work by people in prison. It was organised by the Koestler Trust a prison arts charity which awards, rewards, exhibits, sells & champions arts by prisoners, secure patients & detainees to help them transform their lives. This annual show asked nine family members supporting people though a sentence to choice work produced in the year. There were some lovely work in the show but it’s value lay more in what is was saying and what producing it had meant to the artists. Some of it was hard to look at as you were looking at peoples’ anxieties played out before you. It was a nice touch to include poetry as well as paintings and sculptures. I loved one picture called “Storm in a Glass of Water” which showed a drop of paint falling from a brush into a glass of water and forming a wonderful landscape, such a clever idea and exquisitely painted. I also liked this beautifully painted apples and biscuits using a metal plate a

Fascinating exhibition at the Hayward Gallery featuring 20 artists from the last 50 years that explore our perception of space. All the work altered your perception of the space you were in in some way. For most you could use the magic cliché that “it’s all done with mirrors”. Others divided up the space in an unusual way such as a corner cut off with string giving you a strange idea of the space being a solid object. The show included performance art with a work by Josiah McElheny which consisted of various set of mirrors set at an angle to each other which were worn by performers and walked round the gallery at certain times. They worked well as a work in themselves but set within other space changing work they had a wonderful effect. The show played with your mind. I found Alicja Kwade’s room like piece with mirrors and objects in it particularly strange as it gave a sense of not knowing where anything really was even the walls. I was sure I was going to walk into a

Delightful exhibition at St Martin-in-the-Fields of portraits of religious world leaders by Nicola Green. Green had been given access to a series of meetings between religious leaders around the world which are seen as new era of inter-religion relations creating a dialogue of friendship and an exploration of the differences between religions. There were two sets of work in this show. The Encounter series was a set of head and shoulder portraits of the leaders presented as faceless figures against a patterned backdrop representing symbols of their faith. The bodies were photographs with the faces painted out collaged onto the wonderful intricate backgrounds. These 30 pictures where displayed in three lines with a lack of hierarchy. I loved the backgrounds and would love to see them used for textiles for clothing! The Lights Series were a set of life sized figures of 12 of the leader with screen printed faces but the clothes painted onto the back of the Perspex figures.

Fascinating day   at Southwark Cathedral discussing the art of the First World War. The day had excellent speakers and was a real bargain! In the morning we had Rebecca Newell from the Imperial War Museum talking about the government war art schemes and the artists who took part. In doing so she gave us a good overview of the art of the period and the motivation behind its creation. The second talk of the morning was David Boyd Haycock comparing the life and work of Paul Nash and, one of my favourites, C.R.W. Nevinson, who had studied together at the Slade. I’d not realised that they were born and died in the same years. He discussed their war work plus the effect of the war on their subsequent work. In the afternoon we turned to the work of Sydney Carline with Jonathon Black. Carline, Stanley Spencer’s brother in law, was a pilot in the Italian campaign and produced extraordinary works influenced by his experience of flying and aerial battles. He also looked at Carline’s t

Small display at Southwark Cathedral by Sarah Christie. Christie invited members of the public to select a sherd of pottery, made by hand from cast bowls, and add their own words to break barriers. The idea came from the fact that in Ancient Greece people votes on sherds or ‘ostraca’ from which we get the work ‘ostracise’.   Due to the timing of the construction of this work the words reflect opinions during and after the EU referendum. The work has grown to nearly 2000 contributions of which a selection are shown in the display. It was fascinating to read the words on the sherds and see a snapshot of people’s attitudes as they wrote them and they came together to build a beautiful work. Closes on 4 November 2018

Excellent one day workshop organised by the London Art History Society at Conway Hall looking at the life and work of Frida Kahlo. Led by Jacqueline Cockburn the day split neatly in four lectures. In the morning we looked at Kahlo’s life and how it was reflected in her art. The lecturer talked about Kahlo’s polio and the results of her terrible injuries from a bus crash which left in her pain throughout her life. She also talked about Kahlo’s two marriages to Diego Rivera. In the second lecture of the morning we looked at three contemporary surrealist female artists who all came from Europe to live in Mexico, Remedois Varo, Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna. I’d only heard of Leonora Carrington so found this fascinating comparison to Kahlo and a nice idea to broaden the day out. In the afternoon we took a detailed look at Kahlo’s diaries from 1944 until her death in 1954. These seem to be a mix of diary and sketch book and a place she worked out ideas about her life an

Interesting exhibition at Conway Hall of photographs produced at workshops at the hall run by Grace Gelder. These were photographs of streets, people and townscapes of London. Each photographer showed a set of pictures. Mark O’Brien had taken vibrant picture of the Trump protest a few months ago. In contrast Tim Stubbs Hughes had taken beautiful rather minimalistic pictures. I was particularly drawn to Kathy Smith’s pictures of how Greenwich and Woolwich, where I live, had changed in recent years. I loved a picture of the city down a hill through gothic arches but I must admit I’ve no idea where they are. Closed 5 November 2018

Small exhibition at Fabrica in Brighton of pictures taken by Harley Weir photographs made over a ten-day period in October 2016 in the migrant and refugee camps of Calais, known informally as the Jungle, as they were dismantled. The pictures were shown as an installation with the works printed on gauze and hung round this beautiful former chapel. They focus on the detail of everyday life and the possessions of those being moved rather than the destruction itself. I thought the pictures would have worked better in a more traditional exhibition with more commentary on the works, the images got a bit lost in the big space and the printing on gauze gave them a rather ethereal felling so you looked at the effect rather than the image. The pictures were too important not to be looked at. The show was part of the Brighton Photo Biennial 2018.  Closes on 25 November 2018

Poignant  installations throughout the UK to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. The idea is for communities all around the country to install either a silhouette of a First World War soldier or seated clear Perspex figures in indoor spaces. The silhouette is inspired by an iconic photograph taken during the war by Horace Nicholls. The work is the 2018 Armistice project for the charity Remembered which raises money for veterans’ charities and the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation. I obviously haven’t been all round the country to see these but the one which caught my eye was in Westminster Tube station and I spotted it quite late one evening. It must have appeared that day as I go through every day and hadn’t seen it before. It made me stop and look and take a reflective moment in the busy space. I will certainly look out for others. It’s such a simple and moving idea.

Colourful exhibition at the Benard Jacobson Gallery of new work by William Tilyer, one of a series of shows to mark the artists 80th birthday. Despite the fact these were abstracts I loved them for their colour and technique. The majority of the pictures were made by squeezing paint through painted perforated metal with some over painting and manipulating of the paint. I love the texture of the work although it did remind me slightly of popping spots as a teenager! The star of the show was the large work “The Golden Striker”, five large panels ranging from rectangles at one end, through a gold haze to a circular effect at the other end. Closing on 24 November 2018

Lovely exhibition at Fortnum and Masons of work by John Virtue. I am fond of Virtue’s work which tend to be large black and white abstracted seascapes which make great use of thick white paint. Some of the pictures left areas of beige canvas uncovered which gave a sense of sand. There were also some landscapes painted as small pictures of the same scene stuck together on board to give a repeat pattern. I’d not seen work like this before by Virtue and the excellent booklet on the show points out that these pictures had remained unseen for 30 years. The Frank X Fortnum show has become an annual event featuring different artists and collectors and it is fun to walk round the shop with the plan to find all the pictures. These works blended beautifully in to the décor which surprised me. I suspect a lot of shoppers thought they were a permanent feature. Closed 20 October 2018 Review Telegraph

Interesting exhibition at White Cube, Masons’ Yard, of new work by Julie Mehretu. Mehretu takes news photographs, blurs and manipulates it through Photoshop then airbrushes the image onto canvas to create an abstract work. She then builds this up with screen printing and ink and acrylic marks. I found my eye started to try to find the original image. I didn’t really respond to these works, they were a bit too abstract for me, but I did like the coloured ones and they looked effective in the space.   Closed on 3 November 2018

Gem of an exhibition at Franses of tapestries owned by Henry VIII on loan from a private collection. It was stunning to see tapestries in such good condition and to realise how bright the colours were and the detail they showed. The level of scholarship was fascinating too with excellent descriptions explained where they hung, why they were commissioned and how they were recorded in the inventory of Henry’s possessions on his death. The foyer has some small works including a tapestry of leaves inspired by the New World which had hung in Lady Elizabeth’s Guardrobe and a table carpet possibly made by Maria of Austria. You see table carpets in so many Tudor portraits but I’d never seen on in real life before. The main room had three impressive large tapestries. My favourite was one of St Paul directing the burning of heretic books, part of a set commissioned from Pieter Coecke van Alest for Henry in 1538-9. The iconography was showing that there was a biblical precedent f