Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of Roger Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean War. Fenton was the first photographer to document a war for public consumption. He was only at the front for four month of a two year campaign but the photographs had a lasting effect and toured the UK in over 25 exhibitions. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought a set of 349 the pictures for the Prince of Wales who later added to the collection. The show included a good description of why the war was fought which I’d never quite understood and it stood in weird contrast to the Royalty and the Romanovs exhibition which had highlighted the close relationship between the families at the time so it seemed strange that Britain was at war with Russia for part of that time. The pictures were a range of portraits of the main commanders, scenes of the countryside begin fought over and military life in camp. There is some controversy that Fenton dressed some of the scenes after battles...

Sumptuous exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery looking at the relationship between the English and Russian royal families. The show started with Peter the Great’s visit to London in 1698, the first Russian ruler to visit Britain and ranged through to portraits of the Queen and Queen Mother commissioned from a Russian artists in late 1940s. I found the narrative of the show a bit muddled with lots of names of British and Russian minor royals I’d not heard of before. It livened up as it hit the Victorian era and looked at Victoria’s marital ambitions for her family. I liked the fact that the show included objects and documents as well as paintings and of course it’s always fun to see the Queen’s Faberge. Some of the large malachite and ceramic vases did make me wonder what the English reaction was to the Russian’s arriving for a visit with these vast gifts of bling! The slight elephant in the room was why, given the close links shown in the show, our royal family didn’t help...

Delightful exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the life and work of Louis-Leopold Boilly. Boilly lived and worked through the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the rise and fall of Napoleon and the restoration and fall of the Bourbon monarchy. He was the ultimate survivor and adapted his work to suit his changing audiences. He was one of the first artists to use the streets of Paris as a subject. The pictures were from Harry Hyam’s collection and were on show her for the first time publicly. The pictures ranged from what was virtually 18th century soft porn with a picture of two ladies taking off their stockings through to detailed studies of Parisian street life. I loved a picture of 31 artists, performers and men of letters in an artist’s studio in 1798 as well as a wonderfully detailed picture of a carnival scene which referenced some of the turbulent times he’d lived through. Boilly paints lovely dogs and you know I appreciate that. I liked one of a...

Interesting installation at the National Gallery by contemporary artist Bridget Riley. I thought I’d missed this show in the Annenburg Court but it turned out I’d just not looked up! It is a series of circles painted directly onto the wall and best seen from the top of the staircase. The information board says it represents clouds and is based on the colour palette of Seurat’s The Bathers which is shown in a room nearby. The title is based on a Constable picture of clouds but also refers the angel messengers in many of the pictures in the gallery.   I liked its effect on the space but didn’t get the effect described of it leaving afterimages on your retina which start to suggest movement. It surprised me as I find her stripe pictures very effective and have had to leave a room of them before now. I need to go back and try it from some different angles. Anyway even without the effect it’s a nice work in sympathetic colours.

Charming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by the documentary photographer Martin Parr. I’ve said before that I love Parr’s work and this show didn’t disappoint. It concentrated on his more recent work but drawing on earlier work to demonstrate how he has followed the similar themes building up an archive of images of British life. All the work was shown in a large, painting like format, so they were all easy to look at and the show flowed well. The rooms were themed and many were on the topic of the British at leisure at home and aboard. I loved the room of images from horse races showing excited faces in crowds. It was also fascinating to see the room of post referendum pictures which reflect Brexit Britain and I liked the section on the establishment with the amazing picture of the Queen from behind leaving a livery company event. I hadn’t realised that Parr was behind the BBC One Oneness films which are shown before programmes. They each show a gr...

Fabulous exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at portrait miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. This show displays these small jewel like items really well and manages to pace the show well despite the crowds with magnifying glasses thronging the display cases. It leads you around in a chronological narrative with gentle themes woven into that. The show gives you a picture of the lives of these two artists and of the courts they worked for. As ever with shows showing a generation of sitters you come away with lots of stores to look up. I loved the section on Hilliards trip to France including a never shown before portrait by him of Henry III and the twin portraits in big of Elizabeth I and Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador to Paris, which are thought to have hung in his studio in Paris. There was also a good section on images of Elizabeth and how these were controlled. I loved seeing Oliver’s wonderful detailed drawing of her which was use...

Nice open air exhibition in Soho Square of this year’s pictures in a project to document New Year’s day over 24 years. 24 photographers were allocated an hour of the day to photograph then each year they move on an hour. This is the sixteenth year of the project. This display was curated by Ed Kashi, the American photojournalist. I like the way the pictures were displayed in the flower beds. My favourite pictures were Wendy Aldiss’s of a very realistic sculpture of an old man looking out of a window and Sabes Sugunasabesan’s “Silenced” a picture of Big Ben in scaffolding. An iconic New Year image. I’ll certainly look out for future exhibitions of this project and it will be fascinating to see the accumulated picture at the end of the 24 years. Closed on 19 March 2019 Review Guardian

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy marking 250 years since the Academy appointed its first anatomy professor. The Academy has someone in this role ever since and this show focused on some of the key people and came with a great leaflet listing all of them with a short biography of each. There were some wonderful characters! It was nice to see a portrait of the first professor William Hunter shown with one of the anatomical figures he commissioned as well as a picture of the model in use in the life schools. As one of the professors set up the RA Dining Club the show took the opportunity to look at this history of that as well with a nice display of menus, invitations and drawings of the events. Closes 17 March 2019

Magical exhibition at the Royal Academy of video installations by Bill Viola. If you follow this blog you may know I often have issues with video art but the one artist I always seem to like is Bill Viola so I was very excited to go to this show. It took me a couple of rooms to slow to the right pace. You have to give this work your attention and often it can feel like not a lot is happened then you realise that something has subtly changed which can then cause you to sit thought the film again with a different eye and to spot the moment when things change. Huge thanks to the curators for including running times in the commentaries but I’d also make a plea for some idea of how far through a work you are as I like to see a work from the start and would happily return to a room at the right time to do that. I preferred the works which were straight videos to the more installation style pieces. I loved an early work of a reflecting pool where ghostly figures appeared in t...

Delightful evening at the National Portrait Gallery listening to Martin Parr being interviewed by Phillip Prodger, the curator of the current exhibition of Parr’s work at the gallery. I love Parr’s work having first discovered it at a show at the Science Museum a few years ago and he was everything I hoped he’d be, dry, witty and engaging. He sees himself as social documentary photographer and he discussed what he felt this was and how he realised he was building an archive of British life. He sees his main subject as the Western world at leisure. They talked about what makes a good photograph and Parr said “I am waiting for the right cast to line up in front of my camera”.  He talked about his love of comedy and how he sees great truth and observation in it. He was asked if he represented clichés and said “Clichés become clichés because they are often true.”

Lovely display at Kensington Palace of costumes from the film The Favourite. I loved the film and had though the costumes played a major part in the style of it. I liked the way they stuck to a black and white palette for the court and yet felt very varied. It was great to see a selection of them in a space that was used in the film. I liked Sarah Churchill’s wonderful shooting outfit complete with fake blood still splattered on it. Also the dress and cloak from when Queen Anne addressed Parliament. I was amused to see that the lace on three costumes for a group scene at court was just printed yet looked really effective. The politician’s parties were shown by the different colours they wore with the Tories in blue with white wigs and the Whigs in red with dark wigs. Can we bring that idea back please! The servants costumes were made from old jeans bought from charity shops. Up close you could tell and yet they are beautifully made. Closed on 10 March 2019

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum of the result of the work of the designers in residence last year. Evidently earlier in the show you would have watched the designers at work in studio style spaces which then morphed into these exhibition spaces. They had been asked to address the challenges we face as we strive to improve the quality of life. Helga Schmid offered a space in which she represented a day in 12 minutes via light and temperature effects. It was an interesting idea but I felt one aspect of bad design was having the information board about the work behind the place where people were asked to take their shoes off. This hindered you reading the board and made me lose patience with the work. My favourite work was by Hester Buch where she had looked at green space in post-war housing estates and created an archive of community gardening projects and a trail of plants around the museum which were to be donated to projects in the archive after the show....

Novel installation at the Design Museum to commemorate 70 years of the Land Rover brand. For this work the atrium seats have been reupholstered with original materials used in Land Rovers from 1948 to now. The 18 cushions were arranged chronologically. I thought this work would have been more striking if the colours of the fabrics had been more exciting but on the whole they were dull blues and browns with only the Paul Smith design from 2017 standing out. From the floor of the foyer you could hardly see the cushions and from above they just blended together. Also a lot of the time people are sitting on them so they are hard to see but at least than means people were experiencing them. This was a nice idea but did feel like an advert for the company.

Thought provoking exhibition at the Design Museum looking at the work of architect David Adjaye. Adjaye’s work has featured a lot of work on monuments and this show focused on seven of these projects using scale models, photographs and recreation of the spaces. Each project had a section with a video of Adjaye explaining the work. Not all of the works have been built yet so it will be interesting to these new exciting projects and how they develop. The first project you see is the Gwangju River Reading Room, a pavilion on the banks of the river offering a space where people can exchange books and ideas in memory of an uprising in 1980. Bookcases supported the weight of the roof representing the idea of knowledge as support. The National Museum of African American History and Culture looks amazing and made me really want to visit Washington DC again. It is a vast building with eight floors, four below ground looking at slavery and emancipation and the four above coverin...

Confused exhibition at the Design Museum looking at the social and technological changes in the home in the 20th century and looks at what home might mean in the future. I say confused because there was a lot of information to bring together to look at the past and the future and in places this made the narrative unclear. It might have worked better as two exhibitions examining the past and future in turn. The themes were also slightly unclear in places. I did like the way it broadened the idea of what home is now and in the future to include mobile devices, an element of home that is always with us. It also looked the opposite and how the world is now beamed into our homes and how data about them can be harvested making them less of a private space than before. The show had lots of quirky objects and films. I was fascinated by a film by Gary Cheng showing his 32m sq apartment that with moving walls can have 24 different rooms in it and loved a single unit which contai...

I nteresting exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum of work by illustrator and journalist Elizabeth Suter. Suter covered the Paris collections for British magazines drawing the clothes from memory as sketching wasn’t allowed at the catwalk shows. She worked at St Martins from 1953 -1977 eventually becoming Head of Fashion. The pictures were a lovely representation of the fashion industry of the 1960s and included sketches and well as magazine layouts. They were drawn freely and expressively. Closes 2 June 2019

Nostalgic exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum looking at how designers in London from the late 19040s to 1960s changed the look of the nation. The show focused on Mary Quant and Terence  Conran although it included others such as Bernard and Laura Ashley. I loved the way the show used objects and clothes. Textiles were displayed well and shown like art works. I say it was nostalgic as it was full of things I recognised from my youth and it made me realise my parents were more fashionable that I gave them credit for! I lived near the first Habitat store in Wallingford and it was a regular spot for weekend trips.   I welled up at the sight of the flat pack cardboard dolls house I must have had for Christmas 1968 which my father and a friend who was staying spent all day making for me. I think it had been bought as much for them as me. It even had a little cardboard cat. The clothes didn’t mean so much to me but it was lovely to read that Quant was partl...

Colourful exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum looking at the work of print designer Natalie Gibson. Gibson worked for Jaspar Conran in the 1960s and taught at St Martins where many famous designers studied with her such as Stella McCartney and John Galliano. All the work on show was saturated in colour. The room was beautifully arranged with a small room installation on one side and designs in a cabinet set out to look like a working studio on the other wall. Both were centred on a lovely portrait of her by her husband Jon Weallens. I loved a quote from her on the wall “My house is full of stuff that inspires me, well that is my excuse for it anyway!” Oh dear she’s just described my flat! Closes 2 June 2019

Introspective exhibition at White Cube, Bermondsey of new work by Tracey Emin. I have to admit I didn’t like most of this work. I am sure I am meant to find it as a profound insight into the human condition but I find it a bit self-indulgent. One room was full of selfies taken during the night when she is suffering from insomnia. I am hoping they were a clever reference back to her earlier unmade bed work but I a shallow part of me did want to point out that maybe if she wasn’t playing with her phone she might get to sleep. I don’t like her paintings. Again I am sure they are profound but I find them rather messy and without titles I’m not sure I’d know what they were about. However I did like the central video installation called “The Ashes”, a short piece, which focused on her mother’s ashes on a table in her home moving around them, and the large sculpture “The Mother” which relates to her public commission due to be installed outside the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo....

Nice exhibition at the 508 Gallery of work by the sculptor Eve Shepherd. I know Eve and it was nice to see some of her work which was familiar from other exhibitions and her own open house presentations. It was lovely to see the wonderful “Faith”, which a friend borrowed a few years ago as part of the Easter celebrations at his church, also “Silent Circle” eight marble figures of naked female figures covering their faces with their arms. The only new work in the show was a figure she had done for a charity auction inspired by the literary world of James Bond organised by auctioneers Farron & Lake. The commentary by the figures explained that Eve had some problems with the commission and her first was turned down however when she turned to doing a more traditional depiction of the character it changed in her hands to become a strain female figure in a typical Bond pose. I felt the figure looked rather like Eve herself! Closed 6 March 2019

Thought provoking video installation at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne by the Vincent Dancy Theatre. The film was shown over three screens mounted on stands from a school changing room and looked at the impact of digital culture and social media on girls highlighting some of the dangers of the online world. As you watched you started to realise some of the clothes and prop used in the film were stored in the changing room installation. Some of the film was a hard watch but it did get me thinking and myself and the friend I was with did keep discussing it as we drove home exploring the ideas raised and talking about the imagery used. Closes 10 March 2019

Lovely exhibition   at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne of new work by sculptor Eve Shepherd who was also in residence there. The Stand is a growing work representing unrecognised women through history. There were about 20 figures when I visited but the plan was grow this over time to be 150 figures. They are shown on individual tall stands and are each long figures growing out of a bed of clay to form recognisable figures. Some figures are real people from history and they have their eyes open but others represented the forgotten figures of history whose eyes are closed. I must admit to knowing Eve and it was great to see her there and to learn more about the figures. She had been working in a small studio in the corner of the room which had a figure she was working on and pictures of the women who she had been already modelled. She was sharing the room with Jenny Staff who was running an interactive area which allowed children and adults to play with creative idea...

Nice exhibition   at London Bridge Station of the winner and runners up in the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2018. I was delighted to find this show at London Bridge when catching a train as I’d missed it when it was at Waterloo. It is now touring the country so do check out the link and see if it’s coming to anywhere near you. I always like to see photography in public spaces and there were some lovely works in this show. I liked the fact it included townscapes as well as countryside and looked at details as well as big scenes. Highlights included Alex Wolfe-Warman’s aerial views of rows of terraced houses, Peter North’s stunning picture of raindrops on a washing line each reflecting a tree and Shaun Quilter’s long view of the Peak District. Closes on 10 March 2019

Interesting exhibition at the National Army Museum looking at the work Alfred Munnings did as a war artist for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. Munnings was commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook and this work was pivotal in establishing Munnings as an influential post-war artist. It was well labelled with symbols to highlight three different themes, his experience of a war artist, the military importance of the event and the artistic features. It was nice to see drawings included in the show and in some cases shown with the finished painting. There was also a nice display of the equipment used by the cavalry that he was painting. I found the lighting rather poor for the paintings as there was a lot of reflection and it was sometime hard to find a place to stand so you could see the whole work. The show was arranged in interesting themes starting with the landscape work he did when he first arrived in France, his time with the cavalry and the work of the forestry units. The ...

Strange exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the work of the sculptor Franz West. I loved the effect of this work and the vistas that were set up across the gallery however I wasn’t convinced by the work itself and found it a bit messy looking. I went a couple of weeks ago and must admit I’m finding it hard to remember the work as I sit and write this. It’s not really stuck with me. There was a strange section where they had recreated some of his interactive works and you could handle and interact with them but I found it a little odd that they’d set up two curtained areas for you to do this in! I’m not sure I want to shut myself away in an exhibition and wave some plaster covered everyday objects around. I’m obviously an old fashioned exhibition viewer! I did like the big works that have been placed in landscapes and it was fun to see one outside at the Tate. A lot of the work seemed to need space and light around them rather than being shut in a room. Closes on 2...

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Dorothea Tanning. I was stunned in this show to realise that Tanning lived to be 101 was working for most of that life. She seemed to span different art worlds, from being a detailed surrealist in the 1930s to an expressive contemporary artist as the last work in the show was from 1997. I loved her interest in doors in her early work and the hyper realistic way she painted them. She even included the edge of a real door in one of her later works from 1984.   I liked the early self-portrait where she opens a door onto a corridor of other doors. I think they represent the hidden and the revealed but the leaflet says there were “portals to the unconscious”. Like Dali she was a fantastic painter. The pictures were explained well in the commentaries but I would have liked a bit more on some of them as they were complex works. I liked the inclusion of the early graphic work she did for Macey’s and the ...

Strangely interesting exhibition at the British Museum looking at the role of emigrants to Britain in designing medals both in the Renaissance and Second World War periods. I must admit even I approached this small display with trepidation but the commentary made it really interesting and there were some lovely pieces on show as well as great quotes from the artists about what it was like to live in England and from the English about the emigrants. One of the earliest medalists in Britain was Jacopo de Trezzo who arrived with the court of Philip II of Spain. There were some fine Renaissance pieces. As interesting was the section on artists who arrived in Britain as refugees of the Nazi’s in the 1930s. I loved the work of Fritz Kormis who produced medals of Churchill and Laurence Olivier. Also Paul Vincze’s piece showing cupid as an air raid warden as well as his retirement medals for retirees from the museum’s own coins department. My favourite piece was the...

Beautiful new gallery at the British Museum telling the story of Islamic art. The gallery consists of two large rooms both beautifully designed with cases round the edge and in the centre and had a dark modern look within a classical room. I loved window screens by Ahmad Angawi based on designs from Mecca, Jeddah and Morocco. The cases have very clear glass which made the objects feel like they were in your space. The displays highlighted the diversity of the people and traditions of the Islamic faith arranging them by country and chronology. There was a nice use of contemporary work to highlight some of the themes and a lovely mix of clothes, books, puppets, domestic objects and interior decoration. I look forward to going back and looking at the objects in more detail. Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard

Confused exhibition at the British Museum examining the voyage of Captain Cook through objects collected on them and art by contemporary artists. This felt a strange mix at times and didn’t tell either story that well. It was good to see the original objects but the story of the journeys had been told so well in the recent British Library exhibition that this felt a bit superfluous. The story of contemporary ideas wasn’t told clearly and just seemed to provide a back drop.   The main feature of the show was a recently conserved costume from a chief mourner acquired by Cook on his second journey. It was a neat idea though to start the show with posters from three exhibitions at the museum on Captain Cook from 1965, 1980 and this one to show how attitudes to him have changed. Closes on 4 August 2019

Strange exhibition at the British Museum looking at modern artists who used postcards as a medium, based on the collection of 300 works donated to the gallery by Jeremy Cooper. The display was arranged like a pin board and grouped under themes and artists. They weren’t all postcard sized and weren’t necessarily meant to be posted. A few of them were invitations to shows. There were also some by contemporary artist including Tacita Dean and Sarah Lucas as postcards are still popular despite the popularity of email and social media. I think my favourite set was by On Kawara where he had sent regular postcards to friends recording the time and date he got up with a rubber stamp from 1968-1979 when the stamp was stolen. I also liked Alan Kane’s pictures of items from his parents’ house against plain backgrounds which were given away at the Affordable Art Fair and Frieze in 2008. Closes on 7 August 2019 Review Telegraph

Small exhibition   at the British Museum showcasing pieces bought by a consortium of supporters named after the first keeper of prints and drawings at the museum who have built up a fund for buying pieces at auction to add to the collection. The group have bought 77 pictures of which 21 were shown here. They include works not only by   the old masters but also work which fill gaps in the collection or illuminates it in some way. There were good commentaries on the work and why it was purchased. For example there was a Jacob de Wit counterproof of a Rubens drawing where the museum already owned the Rubens. Also a Jan Luyhen print of the coronation of William and Mary part of a chronicle of ‘modern’ events. There was a lovely rare pen and ink drawing by the pastel portraitist Rosalba Carriera and the design for a panel of a vestment from about 1587. My favourite picture was the attached head studies but annoyingly I forgot to note the artist!

Insightful exhibition at the British Museum showing how Rembrandt used work on paper to experiment with compositions and ideas as well as considering them works in their own right. As ever with shows in the print gallery the commentaries were excellent, taking you through the various themes and techniques. There were lots of examples where different states of a print were shown and one where the plate and print were both there.   There was also one example of a portrait drawing and print together. The drawings were lovely and I particularly liked a picture of an old man and a child where you could feel the squirming of the small child as well as another of a sleeping woman done in a few brushed lines. It was also brilliant to see two pages of one of the sketch book he took out on walks. Of the prints I loved a series of postage stamp sized self-portraits showing different facial expressions. I also marveled again at the different states of “Christ Presented to...

Fun exhibition in the windows of Selfridges of work by world-renowned artists showcasing their work and the galleries that represent them. The windows gave an insight onto the contemporary art world and I was pleased to see a number of artists I’d seen in recent shows in the private galleries. I t was a great way of getting this work out of galleries and into a public space. There was a good leaflet to go with this display and a downloadable audio tour which I didn’t do.  I wasn’t sure all the windows worked. I loved the idea of Richard Wright’s work which had flyposted the outside of the windows but it looked a bit of a mess as people have been peeling them off. In a few other cases I thought it would have paid to clean the windows. It was good to see one of Darren Almond’s number works and a Michal Rovner video of tiny people walking through a landscape. My favourite was Chantal Joffe’s painted figures (shown here) called “A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel” which...