Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting small exhibition at Woolwich Works by The Collective Makers to celebrate black heritage and culture. This is a new venue near me and this was it’s first art show. It was rather a large space for showing art and could have taken much larger pieces but the works looked good and it was nice to see people who were using the café and coming to an event checking out the works.   I would like to have seen labels on the work. Instead they relied on QR codes taking you to the information but I find this quite awkward to navigate. I also find the website quite cumbersome now I come to write the show up as I need to look up each artist to remember which stood out for me. I liked some sculpture in the form of brightly coloured clenched fists down the centre of the room and the attached was my favourite piece but sorry I can’t work out who it was by. Closes 31 October 2021  

Fun, eclectic art fair organised by Saatchi Art at the Old Truman Brewery featuring over 100 stalls for individual artists. It was a real visual treat and a good opportunity to meet artists and hear more about their work. You walked up and down aisles being bombarded by different styles and media. I came away with lots of cards and names of artists to look out for in the future. The best sculpture was Ed Elliott’s small figurative pieces but checking out his website since it looks like they works scale up to life sized and are very striking. Marie Lenclos’s cityscapes stopped me in my tracks and I loved their clarity. Joshua Donkor’s portraits, often in pairs showing two aspects of a person’s character, were beautiful and thoughtful. I also liked Justine Smith’s maps made up of world currencies. There was good photography too such as Paul Broun’s of windows on the sides of buildings. My favourite, shown here, was Rod Kitson’s work painted and sold in one foot squares. I’m not ...

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades on the life and art of Barbara Hepworth. Eleanor Clayton, curator of The Hepworth Wakefield and author of a new biography of the artist, took us through her life. Clayton talked about how she was able to use Hepworth’s own voice in her recent book as she wrote extensively on her art practice as well as writing copious letters to friends. Using great illustrations she talked about how her work developed over the years becoming more abstract over the years but also developing and changing. Despite going to a good exhibition on Hepworth at Tate Britain a few years ago I hadn’t realised she had made a piece for the United Nations.

Fascinating online interview from the National Gallery with contemporary artist, Marc Padeu. Padeu was interviewed by Jenny Sliwka, a Renaissance art historian, about the influence of Caravaggio on his work. She took five of his pictures of a religious society in Cameroon known for their production of bananas and coffee and analysed the links between the two artists. Padeu’s were bright pictures often closely based in composition on Caravaggio. The protagonist often have brightly coloured hair to reflect the effect of the chemicals they work with. He talked about how he put himself through school by painting frescos in churches and while painting a black Madonna and Child he realised the religious power for the nuns in the church he was working on of seeing biblical figures who looked like them. It was a slightly awkward talk as Padeu didn’t speak very good English so it was pre-recorded and Sliwka interviewed him in French and then translated. This made the discussion a bit sti...

Interesting small exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall focusing on photographer Charlie Phillips. Phillips is a British Jamaican photographer who has documented life in the west London communities of Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill. His archive, which is currently being digitised by fellow photographer Eddie Otchere, has in particular recorded the history of the Notting Hill Carnival from its beginnings. There was a nice selection of pictures as well as a small case showing part of his collection of shipping memorabilia. It came with a good video of Phillips discussing some of the pictures in the display. Closes 31 August 2021

Eerie  installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern by Anicka Yi. This consists of floating forms based on ocean life forms and mushrooms which she calls aerobes, which appear from an enclosure in one corner and waft over the space. They are powered by uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) which do not require humans to pilot them. Here, they each follow a unique flight path generated from a vast range of options in the system’s software. I gather they partly move towards people driven by the heat the people generate. The work comes with a scentscape which evidently reflects the history of the Bankside area where the gallery is based. I certainly smelt something when I was there but not sure I could identify what it was. I found this work both endearing and a little frightening. Knowing the forms are driven by AI you get a sense that they could become a life form and I do wonder how it will change over time. I’ll definitely be going back for another look despite feeling it coul...

Wonderful exhibition at the British Library looking at the lives of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. This is a large and quite dense show but it has everything you would want to be there if you know this period and it is such a thrill to see them together. It takes you through the lives of both queens comparing and contrasting as it goes along. Being the British Library there are a lot of documents but they are explained well and there are some iconic pieces such as the attached, the only contemporary copy of Elizabeth’s Armada Speech, and the Tide Letter, which Elizabeth wrote to her sister Mary I asking for clemency as she was sent to the Tower of London which   she wrote slowly in the hope of missing the tide and delaying imprisonment for another day. There was also the letter Mary wrote to Elizabeth telling her about the death of Rizzio. There were a good selection of portraits some of which I hadn’t seen before and some great objects such as the hanging Mary made wh...

Fun exhibition at the British Library looking at the children’s book character Paddington. This was a beautifully designed show with fun installations such as an animated breakfast table, pictures of different versions of Paddington walking round the walls of the show with you and good clips for the TV versions and the films. It was also packed full of original illustrations from many versions of the books and therefore became a history of illustration in the late 20th century. It explained various stories in the series using those illustration. The first toy version from 1972 was there and the typewriter that Michael Bond wrote the first stories on. Things I learnt? That Michael Bond had been a camera man on Blue Peter and that Paddington is a UNICEF champion for children. What a versatile bear! Closes 31 October 2021 Review Telegraph  

Interesting but slightly oddly titled online lecture from Frieze looking at the thinking behind the Documenta art fair due to open in June 2022. The talk had only listed the participants on the advertising but as I was free I thought I’d give it a go. I assumed it was interviews with three contemporary artists. It was still interesting but I would encourage better descriptions of events. The speakers were the director of the show, Farid Rakin, of the collective ruangrupa, Lara Khaldi who is working on the group of the show and Yazan Kahlili who is working on identifying the political meaning and worth of the work and promoting that. The sound quality was quite poor and some of the speakers had quite heavy accents which were hard to understand in those conditions. They were also discussing quite complex philosophical idea about the art market which I’m not sure I grasped completely. Documenta is in the city of Kassel in Germany every five years and I have to admit I had not com...

Bright installation in Covent Garden of neon lights by Chila Burman. This consisted of huge, wacky neon sculptures around the market building of peacocks, tigers and snakes and bulls illuminating the space, plus uplifting words wonderful kaleidoscopic colours, all inspired by Burman’s Hindu Punjabi heritage. I’d not realised this was there and had already found the sculpture of a tiger in lights but was bowled over when I entered the market building to find this mix of images and quotes. I loved this snake and pig. It was all a bit like their Christmas decorations but not at Christmas. Closed 10 October 2021      

Four fun sculptures in Covent Garden by Whatshisname (aka Sebastian Burdon). It was a lovely surprise to turn corner and find two of these bright, Jeff Koon’s like, balloon dogs in yoga positions from his POPek collection. I think Downward Dog was my favourite. Always fun to have some public art which just makes you smile. It was a nice touch that while the works are in place if you post a picture of one of them on social media with the hashtag #castle4bluecross £1 will be donated to the Blue Cross pet charity.  

Weird augmented reality installation outside the Serpentine Gallery by Tomás Saraceno. If you read me regularly you’ll know I’m not keen on virtual and augmented reality works and usually avoid them, but I thought I’d try this as it was something you could do on your phone. It took me a while to understand the app and to get it to activate then it kept dropping out. It’s so much easier and more relaxing to walk into a gallery, look at an artwork, think about it then leave again. Anyway this placed the image of two giant spiders onto the grass by the gallery. I’m not sure I was in the best place to appreciate them as they seemed very close and in fact one appeared from above me as if it had been behind me. Although I’m scared of spiders I found these so large and odd that they were OK. You could also activate a smaller version of the work at home by uploading a photograph of a spider although I’d never get close enough to take a photo! Bring back Louise Bourgeois whose spiders ar...

Strange exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of work from the 1950s to today by the Haitian artist Hervé Télémaque. This was quite an eclectic, colourful collection but could be described in the genre of Pop Art. Reading the good small brochure we were given instead of labels I understand the works better now but did find them a bit impenetrable at the time. Maybe I’d done too much that day. I liked his signature representation of himself as a pair of Y-Fronts but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the old cartoons of John Major! I also liked the way he incorporated objects into some of the work like step ladder in the first work you see. Closes 30 January 2022 Review Guardian  

Gentle outside sculpture at the Serpentine Gallery by Sophia Al-Maria. This is the latest x Modern Forms Sculpture Commission by the gallery and stands near the gallery looking across Hyde Park to Kensington Palace. It is based on dandelions which Al-Maria sees as an emblem of freedom and resistance, as each seed has the potential to become an agent of resilience and change. It consists of twelve stems. I wish I’d realised when I was there that you could listen to it and it immitted sound when activated by the wind or by touching it. It would have given it another dimension. I’m afraid I was too distracted by a couple of dog walkers with a pack of dogs with balls. Closes 24 April 2022

Dramatic structure at the Serpentine for this year’s Pavilion commission by Counterspace, the South-African architectural practice directed by Sumayya Vally. The structure looks very solid and permanent and is a change from some of the more temporary looking structures. It is built of reclaimed steel, cork and timber covered with micro-cement and yet looks like a modernist concrete piece. From reading the commentary I learnt it quotes various community spaces for immigrant communities in London but I must admit I would not have got this from looking at it. I did stop for a coffee in it and liked the way people were using the various heights of benches to sit and talk in small groups. However the concrete style seats were not the most comfortable and didn’t encourage me to linger. I would have liked to see the space in use for large event as I think this would have worked well. Closed 17 October 2021 Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard  

Interesting exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of photographs by James Barnor. Barnor is a Ghanian photographer who was worked between Accra and London. He did studio, portrait and documentary work and his archive has recently been digitised. The pictures were shown in a continuous line around the gallery in chronological order. The whole show gave a lovely sense of not only his work but also his family and friends. The show was roughly in three sections. The early works came from his Ever Young Studio in Accra which became a social centre for the town. There were charming portraits, some shown here, of local people and it was fun to spot the reuse of backgrounds and props. You had a sense of looking at the population of a town in the 1950s. In the 1960s Barnor went to London and the pictures there capture the mood of the time as well as recording the experience of an immigrant population in the city. I loved the pictures of Old Covent Garden and one of his son being admired b...

Fun installation outside the Hayward Gallery of two fountains by Klaus Weber. There are two torsos standing the space, one headless and the other just legs. From each there are spurts of water and at regular intervals the legs one shuts down and instead a cascade of water falls from the walkway above. I love the way you come across these as you walk to the gallery, through to the National Theatre or back to the Festival Hall and they disrupt the familiar space. Closes 9 September 2022      

Nice small display at the British Museum of prints of Switzerland bequeathed by Robert Wylie Lloyd. Lloyd was a businessman, entomologist, art collector and mountaineer as well as being chairman of Christie’s. He left the museum over 5000 prints, paintings and books including 60 watercolours by Turner. Some of the prints demonstrate how the landscape has changed. It included a print of a model of Mont Blanc and a coloured and uncoloured version of a print of the Reichenbach Falls. I loved this print of Saussure and Balmat’s ascent of Mont Blanc in 1787. The show looked at geography, geology, print technique and mountaineering. No end date given

Wonderful exhibition at the British Museum of recently discovered drawings but Hokusai for a encyclopaedia. Drawings by Hokusai are very rare as they were done as a tool in the process of making woodblocks for printing. They would be stuck to the block and used as a guide for cutting the lines and hence destroyed. These drawings ever used and have therefor survived. There were 163 postcard sized drawings arranged in groups on different subjects. Because the works were so slow it did take a while to go round and this wasn’t helped by the middle aged, including me, having a glasses crisis at the start as they worked out which pair would work best. My favourite pictures were scenes of everyday life albeit often overseen by a god. There were also fantasy works which verged on manga. The detail was amazing, as in this picture of a peacock, and some had tiny cross hatching to show rough fabrics. Some of the compositions were complex such as a god revealing the appearance of a spirt in...

Elegant exhibition at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre of new work by Ashraf Hanna. These were vases with clean lines often with black or cream exteriors and contrasting bright interiors. A lot of them were egg shaped with their sides cut down in crisp straight lines and manipulated. Two of them looked like a woman’s torso. There was a wonderful bright yellow glaze which contrasted beautifully with the black and a lovely dark purple one. Closes 16 October 2021

Delightful exhibition at the Wallace Collection bringing together a selection of portraits of male sitters by Frans Hals. The centre piece and starting point was of course their own glorious “Laughing Cavalier” who is neither laughing or a cavalier but is still a wonderful, engaging picture. He was reunited with others of the elite of Harleem also painted by Frans Hals. They were arranged in chronological order which allowed you to see how his brushwork went from meticulously detailed to free and loose but with a similar effect. I was fascinated by the commentaries on the sitters such as Jasper Schade from 1645, an aspiring young aristocrat who paid the equivalent of ¾ of a skilled artisan’s annual income on a single outfit. Other were more sober looking but they seemed to be a great pride in large bellies. I love these sorts of shows which put you amongst a generation of people who almost certainly knew each other. You not only learn about the art but also the people and societ...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the 19th century art historian Anna Jameson. I hadn’t come across Jameson before and was delighted to find out about her. Adele Ernstrom from Bishop’s University, Canada, delivered this inaugural Anna Jameson Memorial lecture clearly outlining her life story and the contribution she made to art history and the National Gallery. I certainly want to find out more. In the 1840s she wrote a guide to public galleries of art in London, shortly after the National Gallery relocated to Trafalgar Square, which she followed up with essays on artists in “The Penny Magazine” and then her “Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters” in 1845. She also advised the National Gallery on the gaps in their early collection as a result of which they acquired a Fra Angelico.  

Interesting lecture from ARTscapades giving a guide on how to enjoy art. Ben Street talked about his new book “How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone” which he has written for people who might find art galleries intimidating and who feel them need to bring knowledge they don’t have to art. I have done talks with Ben before and like his approach and this was interesting but I suspect, in the case of this audience, he was preaching to the converted. He has drawn on his experience of working in galleries as an educator and academic to look at the barriers that the buildings and how the art is displayed can be off putting. He compared how we read books which takes time and how we can go round a gallery taking in multiple images quickly often creating mental overload. He said that art comes wrapped in words in a museum and how important it is to look first and read after. He said that the words are often about things outside of the object such as who the artist is, when it was painte...

Fun talk at Charleston Farmhouse looking political cartoons. Mark Rowson and Steve Bell discussed how they used text and drawings to succinctly sum up the political events of a day. It was a clever idea to include this in their Small Wonder festival, celebrating short stories and short form writing. Each showed a series of cartoons and explained where the inspiration from them came from. They touched on how difficult it is to produce a cartoon for a day on which there has been dramatic news eg after 9/11 and their experience of party conferences as the Labour conference was on at the same time down the road in Brighton. The event was well chaired by Steven Gale which asked good questions to stimulate the conversation.  

Interesting small exhibition at Pallant House Gallery of work on paper and in ceramics made by artists in St Ives. Starting with Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, who moved to the town at the outbreak of the Second World War, they were later joined by others including William Scott, Patrick Heron, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Terry Frost and Denis Mitchell. The show looks at the effect of the landscape on their art and the network of personal and creative relationships. I love the fact this show included ceramics by potters Bernard Leach and Janet Leach alongside the drawings and prints. Closes 31 October 2021    

Delightful exhibition at Pallant House Gallery of miniature art galleries. Pallant House has had a miniature gallery from 1934 since 1997 which was commissioned by Sydney Burney. He asked 34 contemporary artists including Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Augustus John to paint miniature works of art. I’ve always loved this piece partly because I love the artists he chose but also because who can resist a doll’s house! The gallery commissioned a new version for the Millennium with the model made by St John Wilson who had designed the new wing of the gallery and they commissioned miniatures from their artist friends, many of whom they had designed studios for. They include Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and Prunella Clough. Finally during the first lockdown they commissioned Wright & Wright architects who are working on proposals for a new Collections Centre for the gallery and works from 31 contemporary artists including Grayson Perry, Edmund de Waal and Maggi Hambling. Also movin...

Fascinating exhibition at Pallant House Gallery looking at how Ben Nicholson’s art was shaped by objects he kept in his studio. This was a beautifully laid out show with excellent explanations. I loved the fact it included objects from the studio as well as the pictures that feature them. As a lot of the art is abstract I’m not sure I would have spotted those objects if they’d not been there. I loved a striped section of one work which you realised was a jug which was in the show nearby. The show also explained the changes in his art well including how his first relief came about due to the accidental loss of gesso from a prepared canvas. It also looked at the different places he lived and how that influenced his work. My favourite picture was the attached of Mousehole from 1947. I loved the way it combines a real landscape with abstract shapes based on things in his studio almost giving the impression of looking out through a window with object on the window ledge. Closes 24 ...

Joyful exhibition at the Royal Academy of new work by David Hockney. All the 116 works had been done on an ipad and then blown up to a large scale and displayed like Old Master paintings. They were all done over 6 months in 2020 when he stayed in Normandy during lockdown and recorded the landscape around him and the changes that Spring brought to it. You were hit by an amazing sense of colour as you walked into the room and his joy in the landscape. It was nice to gradually see trees and flowers coming back to life. You couldn’t help but be reminded of Monet’s series paintings such as the haystacks and Van Gogh’s pictures of blossom. I am not sure these were great works of art but they certainly have something to say about this strange period we have just been through and it’s wonderful to see an artist of 84 still experimenting with new techniques and tools. Closed 26 September 2021 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Interesting display at the Royal Academy of recent ‘Diploma works’ by RA architects and designers that engage with heritage sites and urban redevelopments. Some of the designs had been realised but others are just suggestions. I loved Sir Peter Cook and Christine Hawley’s bright design for a circular tower in Tel Aviv. I’m not too sure how it would work in practice but I hope they try. I was particularly interested to see these designs for the UK Holocaust Memorial which will be built next to the Houses of Parliament as I had already seen it featured in another exhibition on the work of the architect Adjaye Associates who this was done in collaboration with. Close 31 December 2022  

Fun installation in the Burlington Arcade to mark the launch of the latest Bond film, “No Time to Die”. I’d spotted it a couple of nights’ earlier when it was obviously it’s launch and there was a party so you couldn’t get in so I went back when I was next passing. It consistent of cogs and time pieces hanging from the ceiling and a silver classic gun barrel photo op in the centre in homage to the classic opening of the credits of all the films. All very classy. Some of the shops who had products in the film also had pictures in the windows or displays inside. I particularly like the portraits of two M’s, Robert Brown and Judi Dench, in one of them.    

Striking exhibition (sorry ban pun!) at Miart Gallery of new work by Wolfgang Stille. T hese were a series of bronze sculptures in the shape of oversize matches with realistic human heads on the top. Some were just propped against the wall but others lay in giant matchboxes. In an interview Stille said that they reflect the impermanence of human life. Whatever they mean one view of them through the window drew me into the gallery for a closer look. Surely a sign of striking art. Closes 31 July according to the press release but I went on 22 September 2021.   

Fabulous exhibition at Philip Mould & Co looking at the art of the Bloomsbury Group and how it was inspired by the house they lived in, Charleston. OK I admit I am biased being a huge Bloomsbury fan as I’m sure I’ve said more than once! I thought this was such a clever idea to treat the house as a muse and a different twist. The works were beautifully displayed with good commentaries and it was nice to watch some of the old archive films from Charleston including interviews with Duncan Grant plus Quentin and Angelica Bell. I expected to see lots of things I knew but was pleasantly surprised at how work there which was here I had not seen before including this wonderful modernist flower painting by Vanessa Bell done in 1912. It was also great to see so much from the house in a different setting which made you look at it with fresh eyes. It was particularly nice to be able to see all four sides of the Leda and the Duck chest. Closes 10 November 2021 Reviews Telegraph E...

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain on the life and work of Paula Rego. I love Rego’s more recent work but didn’t know of her early collage pieces or anything about her early life in Lisbon so the first rooms were a revelation to me and explained some of her later work. The pictures were described and presented well and not too thickly hung so they each had room to speak which is important for complex compositions. I loved the room of her 1986-88 works of which the Tate’s “The Dance” was the culmination. These monumental pictures were shown with drawings and studies for them. I was struck throughout how often the subject works were appalling but they are so beautifully painted and packed with symbolism. You didn’t feel you needed to understand all the nuances to find these dramatic works. The commentaries were fascinating though and I loved the touch that Rego had bought her therapist’s couch and includes it in paintings. Closes 24 October 2021 Reviews Times Guardian ...

Bright exhibition for this year's Royal Academy’s Summer show. There seemed to be lots of colour in this year’s show but there were few works that leapt out to grab my attention. Maybe I’ve just been too often and it’s getting a bit samey. Looking through my notes I am struggling   to remember many of the works I’d marked as memorable. I thought Yinka Shonibare had some interesting things to say in his curation but at times if felt a bit woke. I did like the small show within the show of work by Bill Taylor, who was born a slave in 1854 and didn’t stat art until he was 85. It was good to see a work carving prison soap again by Lee Cutter who started doing art when he was in a young offenders’ institution as well as two large, jolly Humphrey Ocean duck pictures. Leigh Bank’s “Last Orders” putting dead pop stars in place of the disciples as the Last Supper was a bit naff but fun and Catherine James “At Home”, a picture of a Dutch dolls house made in blue and white tiles appeal...

Fascinating outdoor exhibition in the courtyard of Burlington House organised by the Geological Society of London of photographs of the solar system. The show, part of the society’s 2021 Year of Space, combined stunning photographs with interesting descriptions of the geological phenomena they show comparing them to the geology of the earth over a series of free standing displays. An interesting and well displayed public show. Closes 8 October 2021  

Interesting small exhibition at the British Museum which invited six emerging artists to reaction to a Raphael drawing to mark the 500th anniversary of the artists death. The show included the double sided Raphael drawing of five studies of nude male torso’s from about 1505, drawn when he was in Florence. It was a result of him seeing Michelangelo’s lost “Battle of Cascina”. I liked Chrystal Chia’s simplified ink and thread drawings which emphasised the line of the originals as well as Eva Suhajek’s bright abstract composition on shaped board which seems to mirror the shape of the figures on the drawing. My favourite, shown here, was Yulin Huang’s colourful version of the drawings layering ink, spray paint, gouche and oil paintings on panel. Closes 13 October 2021

Lovely exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse of new work by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones. This mirrors the accompanying Duncan Grant exhibition recreating his first solo show as this was Adenji-Jones first show too. In particular they seem to speak to the Grant “Venus and Adonis” in the show. Adeniyi-Jones’s work uses patterns, shapes to investigate bodies in motion. Central to his works are West African mythologies and traditions; specifically, his Yoruban heritage which he draws upon to create paintings which combine realism and abstraction. These are bright works with the three facing single colour works facing you as you come in having a feel of Matisse cutouts. I also liked the smaller, bright, densely composed works which have a sense of people dancing and moving. Alongside Adeniyi-Jones in the small spotlight gallery are three works by Ben Enwonwu , a pioneer of African Modernism, who has inspired Adeniyi-Jones. Closes 22 March 2022

Fantastic exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse recreating Duncan Grant’s first solo exhibition in 1920. The scholarship shown in this show was wonderful. Almost all the pictures had been gathered together and where the original couldn’t be identified or borrowed a suitable replacement was found for it. Those that were in the show were indicated by Grant’s signature under the work. The labels on the pictures were good with each saying how much it cost and in some instances who bought it. Two were touchingly by Maynard Keynes and had been borrowed from King’s College Cambridge. Two panels of contemporary critics of the show.   The works were shown in a shown in white and yellow space split a couple of feet up the wall. It was the perfect yellow to set off the pictures and highlight the yellow in them which gave coherence to the display. As for the pictures they were, of course, brilliant and quite a mix of subjects. They reflected the First World War years when Grant had to bala...