Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent exhibition at the Science Museum looking at scientific discovery at the Court of Versailles. This was a clearly described show, cleverly laid out and with some stunning objects and paintings. It’s not a period I’ve ever studied but I am increasingly drawn to it. From realising that the three Louis’s of the period ruled for 149 years I was hooked. The show was full of intriguing stories and people and lead to a lot of Googling, both in the show to check links my brain was making and since. I give you Antoine-Augustin Parmentier who argued that potatoes were the answer to famines caused by bread shortages and declared them edible in 1772 or Madame de Genlis, tutor to the royal children who commissioned this model of a chemistry lab. Throw in a stuffed Rhinoceros killed in the Revolution, some wonderful paintings, including a portrait of the first pineapple grown in France, and the knife used to operate on the kings anal fissure, then there was something for everyone! C...

Useful exhibition at the British Museum looking at how Picasso used prints throughout his career. The show was laid out clearly and chronically with good explanations of the different print techniques. I knew some of the prints well but hadn’t realised how many different types of print production Picasso had mastered. I loved that they also showed prints by artists who had influenced him amongst his work which included some beautiful Rembrandts and a Goya. The show also gave a good outline of his career in general including portraits of his wives, girlfriends and art dealers. Closed 30 March 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum introducing five possible redesigns of their west wing. The show was held in the Reading Room, which it is always magical to enter, and consisted of architects’ models of the five ideas. The space under review represents over a third of their displays, and currently includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Assyrian Lion Hunt. I’m not convinced that some of the designs would give more and better space for display they seemed to concentrate more on providing prestige public space which seems a common theme of museum refurbishment. It’s great to get more people to come but surely you want to entice them to look at the objects and research. I think I would have found it useful to have a model of what the space is like now to make more direct comparisons. There was a plan but I found it hard to visualise how that related to the new ideas. Closed 2 March 2025    

Magical lecture at the National Portrait Gallery with Rose Boyt, daughter of Lucien Freud, talking about her memoir inspire by sitting for him. Boyt was sympathetically interviewed by curator and writer Hettie Judah and the event started and finished with a beautiful reading from the start of the book. Boyt explained that the book came about after she found a diary from the period of one of the sittings but realised her memory of the time, due to subsequent events, was very different. She talked about what it was like to sit for long periods and the commitment that took and highlighted conversations she’d had with her father while he painted. Most magical though was the number of people in the audience she knew and referred to which made it a charmingly interactive event.

Thin exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at the Kola Nut and its global significance and properties. The commentary said this was an “evolving   display” but other than an interactive table at the centre, which I didn’t have time to explore, I’m not sure what they meant by that. There were some interesting facts around about how the fruit had spread across the world via the slave trade and colonialism, as well as how it was used in products for its caffeine properties, however a lot of the display was in the form of av presentations and therefore time consuming to absorb. Closed 2 February 2025

Thought provoking exhibition at the Wellcome Collection examining the impact of work on health. The show cleverly interwove historical and contemporary ideas and organised objects under three themes of work on plantations, in the street and in the home, picked as they are sites of work that is undervalued by society. I would like to have seen it broadened out to factories, service industries and offices. I spent a long time watching a video on how chemical factories have ground up on old plantations sites along the Mississippi surrounding the towns which were based around the original slave houses. There was also had a frightening section likening prison work to slavery with the astonishing statistic from 2013 that there were more black men in jail in America than would have been slaves in the past. The street section covered people who sell on the street, people who clean urban areas and prostitution. The space was dominated by an installation from Lindsey Mendick inspired by t...

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades looking at artists’ palettes. Alexandra Loske, director of the Royal Pavillion in Brighton and author of books on colour, introduced her book on palettes starting by telling us how it came about. She saw palettes as a way that artists organise colour. Her aim had been to find 50 real palettes and use these as route into talking about the artist and where possible identifying the painting for which it might have been used. She talked us through as selection of these. However as she struggled to find 50 real palettes, she broadened this into looking at them in paintings. She talked about how artists use palettes as a symbol of their art in self-portraits. I’ve used a photo of a palette converted into a clock that I bought a few years ago to illustrate this post and at the end of the talk it was fun for the artist, Maria Bell-Salter, who moderates the ARTscapades events and is always surrounded by her paintings on Zoom, to show us her p...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery discussing last year’s Artist in Residence Katrina Palmer. Priyesh Mistry, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, took us through Palmer’s previous work and discussed the problem of displaying work in a gallery which is based on the idea of absence. He talked us through the book Palmer produced as part of the project which is called “The Touch Report” after the informal name for an internal gallery report on incidences where the public touch an artwork. In the book she describes acts of violence in paintings in the gallery without naming the picture. To make this into a installation for the gallery it was put in an empty room, with the shadow of a missing painting, and a purpose-built bookcase. As you know I will go to anything at the National Gallery, well to be honest at most galleries, but I never saw any communications about this installation or book so I missed the chance to go. I am a member there so you’...

Strange exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall by their archive studio looking at the Festival of Britain and what it might look like now. Developed by the Southbank Centre Future Exhibition Makers over the course of a month they looked at stories of the festival and picture pavilions for today. In a small space this was a lot to unpack and I didn’t think the new ideas for pavilions were well demonstrated. Also a huge moan was that the display cabinets had been overlaid with an opaque version of the original logo which made it almost impossible to see what was behind it. Closes 28 November 2025  

Dense exhibition at Tate Britain looking at this artists’ organisation from its foundation in 1933 to the mid-point of the Second World War. The show focused on two key exhibitions Artists against Fascism and War in 1935 and For Liberty in 1943 on the bombed site of John Lewis. It also discussed the First British Artists Congress in 1937, an event that foreshadowed many elements of official post-war arts policy. I say dense as there was a lot of information, with fascinating biographies of the artists involved and lots of archive material, as well as examples of their work. I thought I knew this period of art well, but there were lots of new names to investigate and links to people I did know, like Vanessa Bell, who was an advisory council member. I’m off to Google Felicia Browne who did these sketches and was killed in the Spanish Civil War. I wish I’d had more time for this show and will try to go back and read more of the labels. What looked at first like a slightly dull arch...

Interesting exhibition at Tate Britain marking this year’s Turner Prize for contemporary art. It showcased the four quite different finalists and yet I felt they were looking at quite similar themes. The show started with Pio Abad who had investigated and reacted to items in Oxford museums acquired during the colonial era. The work was beautiful and layered in meaning.   I was intrigued to find one work was inspired by the fact he lives in the Grand Stores of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich which served as the primary storage facility for the military equipment of the British Army and Navy. My flat overlooks them!   Next was Jasleen Kaur’s installations using objects with reflect her multicultural childhood in Glasgow. Who can resist an oversized doillie on a Ford Escort. Then came another installation artist, Delaine Le Bas, exploring their culture, in this case Roma people, with ethereal crepe and a silver room. I’m not sure I really understood it. Finally there were ...

Nostalgic exhibition at Tate Britain looking at photography in the 1980s. The show began with photographs documenting the era which they took to begin with the Grunwick Strike in 1976 which I thought was clever as it established the idea of collective action it was also based around a film processing laboratory. These were my formative years of university and early career so it all seemed horribly familiar. As well as photographs as documents I also got a sense of them as an art medium, with some interesting collage work and a room dedicated to pictures with words added, and as a process in a study or campaign. Other themes investigated were the cost of living, landscape, remodelling history, community and self-portraits. The show included one of my favourite photographs by Martin Parr shown here. There is something so British but weird about it. Closes 5 May 2025 Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard

Beautiful exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel of contemporary art works relating to contemplation, compassion and wonder. All the works were from the collections of David and Indre Roberts. I’m not sure I understood the theme but there were some beautiful pieces which looked fabulous in the ornate space. My favourite piece was a ceramic triptych by Rachel Kneebone. I love her work so I came to the show specifically to see this piece. Berlinde De Bruyckere’s sculpture made of the skin of a horse placed in the altar space was haunting and I was drawn into Gabriella Boyd’s ambiguous painting trying to work out what it showed if anything. I’ve only just noticed from reading the handy leaflet again that only one of the art works was by a man which was refreshing. Closed 9 February 2025 Review Guardian