Cathy's Art Diary

Lovely public exhibition outside the National Theatre of photographs by Hannah Smiles of objects found by the Thames. The information boards pointed out the Thames is the longest continuous archaeological site in Britain, a cumulative rubbish dump from thousands of years. The pictures were beautifully clear images showing the finds in isolation and giving them a sense of grandeur. I loved one of a pilgrim badge of St Thomas a Beckett   and well as one of Art Deco glass buttons but my favourite, shown here, was of the bowl of an anti-slavery clay pipe. Closes 5 October 2019

Evocative public exhibition outside the National Theatre as part of the Totally Thames festival looking at the smells of Barking. Organised by Valence House Museum it looked at 150 years of the smells of Barking. Although it was just a series of information boards they set the story out really well with just enough information. It went through the industries of the area and what they might have smelt like. Barking was particularly smelly as it was downwind of central London and a lot of London waste ended up there. I’d not realised what a big fishing fleet Barking had and I learned about industries I’d never come across before such as the annual ice harvest after landowners in the area flooded their land then harvested the ice that formed. Also the import of bird poo from Peru for fertilizer as well as manure from the city being shipped to Barking to be used in the market gardens nearby. Closes 5 October 2019

Striking installation at the Oxo Tower as part of the Totally Thames Festival by school children from Nigeria. Organised by the Five Cowries Arts Education Initiative based in Lagos, bringing together children, young people and teachers from across Nigeria with partners around the world to educate and raise awareness of water pollution crisis. It consisted of brightly painted jerry cans painted by the children hanging along the loggia at the bottom of the tower. They looked bright and colourful and made you stop to read what they about. Unfortunately I missed the sister exhibition outside City Hall of photograph exhibition of the project. Closes 30 September 2019

Nice exhibition   at the Bankside Gallery of new works by members of the Royal Watercolour Society and Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. The shows at this gallery are always nicely hung picking up themes between the pictures. Highlights in this show include Stuart Robertson’s long pictures of the British Museum and the Duomo in Milan, Laura Boswell’s peaceful Japanese woodcuts and Wendy Jacob’s cool square still lives. My favourites were Thomas Plunkett’s abstracts particular the picture I use here which made me think of a Venetian interior. Closes 15 September 2019

Beautiful installation on the river Thames at Bankside created by created by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov and local school children. The ship is made of bamboo, wood and silk with 178 canvas sails made by children in workshops and based on their discussions of diversity. It looks striking and colourful sitting in the river with great views of St Pauls behind it looking one way at Tate Modern the other way. The ship has had other iterations around the world since it first appeared in Egypt in 2008 including the 2010 Venice Biennial.  When I was there one of the primary schools who were involved turned up to look at it and were excitedly pointing out their canvases on the information boards although I admit they were easily diverted by the bubble man nearby. I did hear one girl say to her teacher “This is the best school trip ever”. Hopefully taking part is something they will remember for a long time to come. opefully taking part if something they Clos...

Charming exhibition on Lewes High Street of pictures of the town from 1860-1960 taken by generations of the Reeves family. I thought this was such a novel idea! Pictures of the High Street were places in light boxes in shop and business windows either in the place where the picture was taken or of the view you could see from that spot. They were lovely clear images and it was fascinating to see how the street had changed, or in most cases not changed. Even better the E.Reeves photographic studio was open the weekend I went. It’s been in the same family for four generations and they still use the Victorian studio at the back of the shop. It was fascinating to see what a studio looked like and to realise it obviously worked as they were still using it now. You could see the same chairs in the studio as in a lot of the Victorian portraits on show. Closes 29 September 2019

Excellent study day organised by the London Art History Society as the last in a series on early Italian art focusing on lesser-known fresco cycles. Other study days in this summer series had looked at specific cities but this final session swept up other art which wasn’t in those three major centres. We also had a different lecturer for this session and Clare Ford-Wille took us on a lovely tour of Northern Italy and added lots of towns to add to my list of places I want to visit. Most interesting was her tour of the abbey at Pomposa which I had not come across before. Various abbots had commissioned cycles to promote the church. Sadly none of the artists are known but there seems to have been a fashion for depictions of the Last Supper at circular tables. We then looked at cycles in Padua which are overshadowed by the amazing work by Giotto which we had studied in the previous session. We started with the work of Giusto da Menabuoi in Baptistery commissioned by Fina B...

Interesting display at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits of the artist George Elliot to mark the bicentenary of her birth. Born Mary Anne Evans, George Elliot had concerns about her appearance having been called ‘long’ and ‘pale’ so she kept a low profile and so there are few portraits of her. This gallery holds most of the pictures of her and five of them are shown here, 2 paintings, a watercolour, a drawing and a photograph. The earliest work was from 1842 and was painted by her friend Caroline Bray from life and the last one was the drawing of her, sketched at the theatre, by Lowes Cato Dickinson who spotted her at a concert and drew this on an envelope. My favourite was by Frederick William Barton of her in her mid-40s, a close cropped, intimate picture which she agreed could be used for engravings. Closes 8 December 2019

N eat display  at the National Portrait Gallery examining the interwoven history of India and Britain in the early 2th century via photographs of Indian nobles who came to this country. I would like to have seen a bigger display for this and to have had more people included There were just eight pictures of which four were of the cricketer Prince Ranjitsinghji. They showed him playing cricket, a cigarette card based on that photograph, on a bicycle and in his First World War uniform. The other pictures were all by Dorothy Wilding of Indian women but there wasn’t a lot of explanation of why she was popular with them or the stories of the women. It all felt a bit thin. Closes 15 December 2019

Interesting display at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits of those involved in the Peterloo Massacre to mark the two hundredth anniversary. The display was just two sides of a small case but there was an extensive information board which helped to explain the context and why so few pictures of the protagonists exist. There was just one watercolour picture, shown here, of the main speaker at the event, Henry Hunt, but others were represented by prints which became popular after the event. It was a nice touch to have the display near the portrait of Shelley who wrote two poems about the event which weren’t published until the 1830s. Closes 1 March 2020

Small display at the National Portrait Gallery to mark the recent acquisition of a portrait by the Holbein workshop of Jane Seymour. The quality of this work suggests it was for a high status client but it seems to be unfinished with the underdrawing showing and the sleeves yet to be filled in. It tells us a lot about the workshop’s process showing that the dress and jewelry seems to be the last thing to be done, maybe in case fashion changes while it’s being painted? Was the workshop waiting to be lent the jewelry to paint? I also suspect it shows that a different artists were brought in as an experts on painting textiles and jewels. Review Guardian

Disappointing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of contemporary portraits shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award. There were some lovely pictures in this show but this year it felt a bit thin, there were just 44 pictures, and I don’t like the use of a small gallery to show them as it doesn’t give the chance for the work to breathe or to give good vistas through the show. I did like Didler Altmeyer’s huge self-portrait which luckily you were able to view across the room as it worked so well from a distance. I liked the wall of small pictures with the one I show here as the centre piece. By Massimiliano Pironti it was a stunning portrait of an old lady.   I also liked the third prize winner by David J. Eichenberg painted in oil on aluminium which had a wonderful glossy effect.   Sometimes the stories were as good as the picture such as Jeff Midghall’s picture of his mother in the hospice that she had previously volunteered in called “ Doctor-Patient” and...

Fascinating exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by Cindy Sherman. Sherman uses herself, wigs and clothes to comment on contemporary society. I feared that as all the work was self-portraits it would feel quite self-centred but in fact using the same model, herself, anonymised the figure and made you look at the accessories and what they represented instead. I loved the early set of pictures called “Film Stills” in which created 70 pictures resembling film adverts from the 1940s to 1960s. Each one could have been a short story! Also the history pictures done when she was living in Rome which were pastiches of historic portrait styles. It was a lovely touch to have borrowed Madam Moitessier by Ingres from the National Gallery to show with them. The central gallery was a recreation of her studio using illusionistic photographs of the shelves covered in artefacts and wigs and the most recent works were murals which I wasn’t sure worked so well in the space....

Excellent art trail around East Sussex featuring work by artists and makers from Lewes, Seaford, Newhaven and surrounding villages in their own homes and workshops. I have to admit we only had an afternoon to do this so we focused on the area around Lewes starting by heading to Ringmer and a show featuring work by Dion Salvador Lloyd, an artist we know from open houses in Brighton. We got a lovely welcome from his partner who had organised the show and were delighted to be shown his studio at the house. As well as his lovely calm seascapes there were lovely ceramics and work by complimentary artists. From there we headed to Glynde and had a wander round this lovely estate village dropping in at three or four events. The highlight was the show at Glynde Place which mainly featured sculpture both in the coach house and the garden. I particularly liked the stone carving there including work by Paulien Gluckman, Alyosha Moeran and Will Spankie. Closed 1 September 2019

Interesting exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the work of Maria Neurath who designed science books for children. Neurath devised a way of analysing complex information and distilling it into concise explanations using words and pictures in a technique called Isotype. The style was devised in Vienna in the 1920s with her husband Otto before she fled to England in 1942. Otto died in 1945 but she carried on her work. A lot of the books and illustrations on show did look familiar. The books were a little early for me but I think I was recognising a style which is now fairly common place. She used repetition of an image with slight changes to explain a concept or use large double page pictures to show complex structures such as an underground station. I loved the way her “The Wonder World of Nature” series were shown as open books, two to a frame, showing them off like art. I also liked displays which showed a work from initial idea to published books. ...

Delightful exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the work of the cartoonist/graphic novelist Posy Simmmonds. I’ve been a Posy Simmonds fan since her work on the Guardian Women’s Page and have all the novels so it was wonderful to revisit her work and see her gentle satire of British life. I was laughing out loud from the first cartoon I read! It was lovely to see her childhood drawings which already parodied school friend style magazines and the show showed how her style changed as printing methods developed. It looked at her books for children as well and included a sketchbook for her book about the old Cat “Fred”. The last room was dedicated to her latest book “Cassandra Darke” and had the complete layout around the walls with lots of sketchbooks and preliminary drawings to show how the ideas developed. This was the first book she had produced digitally but it was reassuring to see that all the drawings were still hand done and her husband still typesets...

Small exhibition at the Foundling Museum of paintings and prints by Nicola Bealing based the narratives of 18th century ballads. The pictures had a Paulo Rego feel and had wonderful titles such as “The Disappointed Pastry Cook”. The display included a copy of that and well as “Shameless Joan”. They relied heavily on toilet humour so it was hard to find an image to use on the blog but they were fun and such a nice idea to take inspiration from the old ballads. Closes 1 September 2019

Fascinating exhibition at the Foundling Hospital using Hogarth’s “March of the Guards to Finchley” to look at the noises of 18th century London and how he showed the five senses in his work. Although this show was quite text heavy, and there wasn’t a lot of original material, it outlined its narrative really well and was packed full of interesting facts, figures and ideas. With the painting on one wall it took you around aspects of the pictures in detail while listening to a soundscape of the noises in it. It really showed you the detail of the picture and the symbolism of all aspects of it. I’d not come across the idea that a man peeing in a picture can be a reference to syphilis and therefore the problems in society as one symptom is the need to pee and this case this was highlighted by the gentleman in question looking at a poster for a cure. The girl shown here has a copy of the National Anthem in her basket which had been published in the new arrangement shown her...

Magical exhibition at the Wallace Collection showing shoes by Manolo Blahnik among the art works. I have to admit straight away that I am a shoe nut so of course I was going to love this show. Sadly I don’t and can’t wear shows like this anymore but I could easily have them as ornaments! Blahnik has been inspired by the Wallace Collection paintings, furniture and porcelain over the years and the shoes echo the style and detail of the art they are shown with. The shoes were shown in glass domes in themes to match the rooms they are shown in. I loved the “Love and Passion” section shown in the Oval Drawing Room alongside the famous Fragonard of the girl on a swing losing her shoe. I was also charmed by the way shoes were shown alongside snuff boxes and miniatures in the Boudoir Cabinet, shown off like the art objects they are. There were some great examples in the Great Gallery and it was wonderful to see the art through the domes and they had been arranged well to refle...

Small exhibition at Somerset House of portrait photographs by Horace Ove as part of the larger “Get Up, Stand Up Now” show upstairs curated by his son. These were beautiful clear pictures but I would have liked to know a bit more about the people in them. I loved the one shown here of Madge Sinclair and there were lovely ones of Kwame Kwei-Armah and Chris Ofili in front of an unfished picture. Closed 15 September 2019

Intriguing exhibition at Somerset House looking at the role of Hennessy   cognac in Black culture and in particular in Grime music. OK I admit my knowledge of Grime etc is nil so this could sound like a seriously middle aged post! The first part of the show were some great photographs of   musicians by Olivia Rose alongside good “Sound Stations” on which music historian Lloyd Bradley talking about the different styles of music and where it had come from. I must admit those descriptions when straight over my head! The second part looked at how the relationship between Hennessy and Black music. It was originally discovered by US troops in the First World War who took in back to the jazz clubs of Paris. The company recognised this and aimed its advertising at the Black middle classes and professionals. There were some lovely archive examples of this set up in a display like a bar with high stools.   The first section of the show had talked about the importance o...

Interesting exhibition at Somerset House of photographers who draw on their experience of being immigrants and descendants of immigrants to Britain. I loved the description on the handout that these works “present a view of British identity, not as a single monocultural lineage, but as an accumulation of multiple perspectives and memories, ethnicities and racial origins.” It was nice to see Chris Steele-Perkins “The New Londoners” series again. They were shown earlier this year at the British Library. He is trying to photograph a family living in London from every country in the world in their living rooms. I loved Mahtab Hussain’s portraits of the community around a mosque in Tipton, West Midlands, that was nail bombed. My favourite piece, shown here, was by Kurt Tong a multi-layered work that traces her family from China to Hong Kong and then the UK. She combined new photographs with found images and pages from family albums. I loved the sense of the present being sup...

Dynamic exhibition at Somerset House looking at 50 years of Black creativity in the United Kingdom and beyond.  The show was curated by artist Zac Ove inspired by the work of his father Horace who documented the rise of Black Power in the UK in films and photographs. There were lots of his father’s photos in the show. The rest was arranged over five themes, motherland, dare to change the world, masquerade, imaginary landscape and mothership. I thought the show struggled to tell two stories. One stream was telling the story of Black life in Britain over the last 50 years while the second looked at the response to this by contemporary artists. There was a lot of good archive material but it wasn’t well explained and I’m going to have my usual moan about labels. In this case what is the point of putting wordy labels in a small font at ground level! It was the contemporary art which stood out for me including the work shown here by Sanford Bigger in which African style...