Cathy's Art Diary

Colourful exhibition at the Royal Academy of early works by Mali Morris selected by the artist. The show included a set of paintings, “Edge of a Portrait” from 1994 which consist of shapes entering from each side of the work to create abstract profiles.   I loved the bright colours and fluid painting. On another wall were twelve small acrylics in darker colours shown here. The friend I was with likened them to pictures of cells dividing which I thought was very apt. My favourites however were the more naturalistic landscapes from the late 1980s which were bathed in the colours of sunshine.   I may have to revisit this show as I realise now there was a sister show, which was closed on the day I went, of works selected by Morris from the Academy’s own collection which would have given an interesting insight into her interests and aesthetic. Closes 4 August 2019

Beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the nude in Renaissance art. The show was gently themed but mainly let the pictures speak for themselves. It began by looking at the subjects, both religious and secular, which include nude figures then examined techniques and models used in these works, finishing by looking at more personal pictures. This is a period I’ve studied a lot so there were a lot of old friends and it was quite fun predicting what might appear. There were a few surprises too such as the rather surprising drawing of the Ecstatic Christ. I liked the fact the show included lots of different art forms not just paintings including sculpture, etchings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. There were some fascinating hangs to draw comparisons particularly two sets of pictures by Giovanni Bellini and Hand Memling from almost exactly the same date. These were shown back to back in a display cabinet down the middle of one room. My favourite work was ...

Quirky exhibition at the Royal Academy by Adam Shield and Thomas Whittle presenting an open studio and workshop producing posters. Unfortunately we went this show on Bank Holiday Monday so the artists weren’t there but it was still fun to see the posters strung up around the wall and the printers and photocopiers they were produced on. You were encouraged to take copies of the pictures which were lying around. I might try to go back when they are there to hear a bit more about the aims of the project. The title came from the image drums in printers. Closes 10 May 2019

Small exhibition at the Royal Academy to showcase the four finalists in this award which champions new talent in architecture that re-image the possible futures for architecture in a changing world. The show features innovative projects by the firms using photographs and models. I loved atelier masomi’s design for a market place in rural Niger which retained its original structure around an ancestral tree but provided new stalls using brightly coloured metal canopies to provide shade and brick stalls that cooled the space. Who could resist Bangkok Project Studio’s design for an elephant stadium and observation tower?   I loved the idea that the tower will weather to create an almost transparent structure and the large space where the animals can move freely as if in a forest. Closes 27 May 2029

Monumental exhibition at the Royal Academy of new work by Phylida Barlow. I say monumental at the pieces were large and created wonderful indoor landscapes and lovely vistas between rooms. At first I felt it was an odd space, and I’d still like to see some of them out of doors, but found that the rooms acted as a frame for the work. I wondered at first what he title meant but then realised that you had to walk back through the show to exit so the galleries acted as a cul-de-sac. This made you relook at the works having seen all of them and you saw different things in them. I loved the way you could see a flash of colour from the first work which was large cotton canvas’s draped over stands, throughout the show. A lime green one in particularly really popped. I also loved a work at the end with huge interlocking tripods holding up large blocks which looked heavy but on closer examination were polystyrene. My only moan was that all the work was called “untitled” with a su...

Interesting exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery looking at the life and work of the poet and artist Adrian Henri using work and ephemera from his archive. I had seen a similar but smaller show at the ICA a few years ago but it was nice to see this again in a larger space and with more use made of the articles, leaflets and show bills. It was also good to see it with a large scale film of some of his London happenings showing on a loop so his voice and the poems were in your head as you looked at the works. Also fun to have the art works round the walls surrounding the display cases. All of the work was infused with a gentle sense of humour and I loved this British take on the iconic Andy Warhol image! Closes 9 June 2019

Moving exhibition   at the Whitechapel Gallery looking at the history of LGBTQ+ spaces in London from their growth in the 1980s to the current threats from developers. This was a small show but tightly packed with stories told through ephemera. It was a bit wordy and it took me while to slow down to read the long but interesting descriptions of the different clubs, cafes and community spaces. There were sections on the City of Quebec originally associated with gay Second World War airmen returning from war and the wonderfully named Women’s Anarchist Nuisance Café. I was fascinated by the story of the Joiners’ Arms, a gay pub which closed in 2015. The flag shown here flew outside it. It was closed due to a redevelopment of the area however Tower Hamlets has insisted that the developers grant a 25 year lease to an LGBTQ+ venue and contribute to the fit out costs. The show also included some contemporary art works my favourite of which was a board of leaflets collected...

Innovative exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery using work from the “la Caixa” contemporary art collection. This is one in a series of shows which will invite a writer to select works from an art collection and produce a new piece of writing based on them. It’s an interesting way of highlighting unusual and less well known collections. This show just had six pieces but included a Andreas Gursky of an archaeological dig at Thebes and a Gerard Richter from a series of back views of his wife. There was a lovely video installation by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster which recreated a bare room with a video against the end wall of a child sitting on the floor with silhouettes of adults and trees appearing. It reminded me of a Bill Viola in its slow delivery and haunting quality. My favourite piece was this painting by Miquel Barcela called “A Fistful of Earth” a stunning desert or moon scape with built up rocks. I did sit and try the start of the piece of writing which was ...

Confused exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery which invited architects and artists to respond to issues we face today. I found the show a bit hit and miss. I liked the idea it was reimagining a similar show at the gallery in 1956 and it might have been interesting to see some archive material from that as a comparison. I didn’t understand some of the installations as their descriptions were just so convoluted that I gave up trying to work through the text. I did however like the idea that the works were ‘numbered’ by symbols rather than numbers of letters. Because each installation looked at a different topic that whole thing felt disjointed however some of them did spark ideas. I loved the fact as you entered the show you were invited to walk through a sheep management system decorated with animal related objects such as dog toys and a hamster tunnel. I’m still not too sure what it meant but it was fun! It was also nice to see a work by Sir David Adjaye, the architect who...

Fascinating exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by conceptual artist Kader Attia. From the first room which had various works looking at post-war housing estates I was grabbed. The room was dominated by a video installation panning up a block of flats, showing all the different lives being lived in them, then rising above the roof to the view beyond. With it was a suspended breeze block and a metal abstracted model of one of the blocks. Another room looked at how objects are exhibited in exhibitions and in particular what this says about the history of colonialism in European countries. I loved the papier mache packaging shown on plinths which resembled African masks but were in fact waste products. Also the stained glass feature in the corner which showed the back of a fragmented window behind gallery wall which had been broken through. You went round the corner to see the front of the glass. This seemed particularly poignant just two days after the Notre Dame fire. ...

Disappointing exhibition at the Hayward Gallery looking at early work by the photographer Diane Arbus. I had looked forward to this show as one of a series in London at the moment on important photographers and I  started by thinking the layout of the show was quite innovative as the pictures were displayed on columns which broke up the space into maze like walks and gave a feeling of moving through the crowded New York Streets she was recording. However after a while this format became quite dull as the pictures were all the same size and format, plus the lack of any commentary meant you were just glancing at the pictures and few of them grabbed my attention. I got a sense of glimpsing parts of stories but a wanted the fuller narrative. I did like one picture of a couple arguing at the Coney Island fair which had caught a moment of annoyance on her face and indifference on his. I always love her picture of a young man in curlers smoking a cigarette which I’ve seen in m...

Fascinating international conference at the National Portrait Gallery jointly organised with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the University of Cambridge looking at new research into the miniature of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. The two day conference complimented the current superb exhibition at the Gallery and consisted of 18 academic papers in seven sessions plus a keynote lecture. There was a fascinating array of topics and I particularly liked the ones looking at the attribution of a picture or the identification of the sitter. It was interesting to hear about other artists working in this field and an ongoing debate as to how many ‘diverse others’ there were. Hilliard claims to have taught many people but can we see their hands in the work? Another ongoing discussion centred around whether the playing cards which were used as the support for the paintings were chosen with specific subjects in mind such as the Ace of Diamonds for royalty. ...

Strange exhibition at the Guildhall Gallery looking at the artists of the Visionary movement and how they have influenced 20th century and contemporary artists. I must admit I never quite understood the theme. It never quite explained the Visionary movement except to say the artists were”dreamers where reality meets imagination” and they seemed to pick artists who I don’t associate together in my mind such as Blake, Rossetti and Constable. It didn’t help that I missed that some of the modern works were shown on the gallery above the main room! There were some interesting works including two sets of prints by Blake, “The Bard” and “The Fatal Sisters”, designs for stained glass windows by Burne-Jones and a study for “The Guild of St Mary” by Rossetti. I’m still not sure how the oil sketch of Salisbury Cathedral fit the theme though. Closes on 30 April 2019 

Fascinating exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery looking at the representation of children in Victorian art. I must admit I thought this show might be a bit saccharine but it was saved by good commentaries and an excellent timeline of changes to legislation in the period to help children. It was shocking to see that a law was passed in 1847 to restrict children’s working hours in textile factories to 63 hours a week. What were they working before?! The show had nice themes such as at play, at work, in poverty, at school etc and there were some lovely pictures. It’s always nice to see Millais “First Sermon” and “Second Sermon” featuring his daughter pristine in the first and asleep in the second. Also to read again the story of the child model in Leighton’s “The Music Lesson” who was a circus performer turned actress who married an aristocrat. There must be a novel in that! New finds included “Sympathy” by Briton Riviere of a dog sitting on the stairs with a little g...

Beautiful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of embellished self-portraits by Jessa Fairbrother. These were exquisite delicate nude self-portraits with the head turned away which were then either embroidered or perforated to give a lace like pattern. The embroidered work tended to put a circle around the head, use a lot of gold and have lovely blue backgrounds so they had a feel of early religious painters such as Giotto as well as overtones of Klimt. The perforated ones made her skin look like it was covered in colourless tattoos. Closes 28 April 2019

Depressing but lovely exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the work of photographer Dave Heath who died in 2016. Heath’s work looks at the idea of alienation in post-war American society. He photographs people on their own or as faces in groups not communicating with each other. I liked a quote where he described himself as a flaneur. The show took it’s hook as Heath’ 1965 book “A Dialogue with Solitude” and there was a copy of the book there as well it being shown page by page in the wall in the proof layout. I liked his early work from his time in the Korean War where he started to photograph his fellow soldiers on their own, away from the front. They were faces of men who had seen a lot. Closes 2 June 2019

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery featuring the four finalists in this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. The competition identifies and rewards innovation an excellence in photography. This is not only for the photographs themselves but also in exhibitions, projects or books by the photographers nominated. Two of the photographers have recorded conflicts. Arwed Messmer showed how pictures used in the investigation of the Red Army Faction in Germany now provide a different insight into the history of this period. OK I admit as I didn’t know this bit of history so the photographs didn’t mean a lot to me and the display didn’t really enlighten me. Having said that I liked the tall pictures of the bookcases in cells. Susan Meiselas was nominated for a retrospective of her work including her ongoing project on Kurdistan. Laia Abril’s work was for a book investigating abortion throughout the world. I found it a hard watch. There were m...

Fantastic refurbishment of the Victoria and Albert Museum galleries housing casts of sculpture and architectural features from around Europe. I’ve always loved the cast courts and I was worried that the museum might try to do something new with the space but it has just been refreshed, cleaned and loved. The paint work has been taken back to an original colour and there are nice new information boards, not just about the work there, but also about the history of the gallery and the reason for collecting casts. The gallery was designed around the large casts of cathedral facades at either gallery and it’s nice that you can view these not only from floor level but also from the gallery from the floor above. I always manage to spot something new when I go to these galleries so I’m not sure if they’ve fitted in more items or if I’d just not noticed them before. I love the line-up of the early Plantagenet tombs shown here and feel like it was seeing old friends. I’m always ...

Good new gallery   at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the history of photography and contemporary themes. The Victoria and Albert Museum was the first to collect photographs and to commission pictures of the works in its own collection. In 2017 the Royal Photographic Society lodged their collection with the museum. This refurbishment and reinstall was very classy. It maintained the integrity of the rooms, keeping the lovely lunette around the top of the walls and painting the walls in dark sympathetic colours. There was also a board telling you about the original use of the room as a display room for student competitions. The first room gave a good narrative of the history of photography using objects as well as pictures and had features on the main pioneers while the second room looked at contemporary photography including a couple of featured displays. There was also a viewing room called The Dark Room showing films about photographers in the collection....

Gorgeous exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the designs of the Dior couture house. This is a wonderfully designed show with the clothes shown in beautiful settings with good use made of mirrors to show of the exhibits and make the space feel larger. It is a bit of a crush because it’s so popular with a few bottle necks, but on the whole it’s easy to see the clothes even if you can’t read the labels. To be honest I was so blown away by the outfits that I stopped reading the text. I didn’t care what they were, they were beautiful. The show covered all the designers who have work for the house but I did find Dior himself came across best. His outfits were what you think of as classic feminine clothes particularly the formal wear. It is what you would draw as a little girl!   John Galliano wasn’t going down so well with the slightly older clientele in the day time but I loved their fantasy feel. It’s quite hard to describe specific bits of the show...