Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the National Maritime Museum showing shortlisted entries in this annual award for astronomical photographs. I had been to a couple of previous iterations of the show and the reviews for them could count for this show too. The works were beautifully displayed on light boxes with commentaries on the subject and technique by the artists. My favourite section was that on earth and space which features work with a sense of the earth and people including a wonderful array of pictures of auroras as I found them more relatable. The sections on our solar system and deep space tended to produce works which look more abstract and the explanations were impenetrable. Closes 11 August 2025  

Wide-ranging exhibition at the National Maritime Museum looking at pirates. The show started by looking at the myth of pirates and how they have been portrayed in books, on stage, in film and in children's toys. As someone who used to sing in amateur Gilbert and Sullivan shows it was fun to see "The Pirates of Penzance" well represented. I also loved a cabinet on Captain Pugwash. The show then went on to look at real pirates starting with the height of the trade in the 17th and 18th centuries then moving on to piracy linked to colonialism in the 19th century. I would have liked to see more original material actually linked to pirates, there was a heavy reliance of showing generic weapons of the period. The show ended with a small section on modern day piracy. Closes 4 January 2025 Review Times  

Delightful exhibition at the Design Museum highlighting the work of Bethan Laura Wood. This exhibition is first in an annual series showcasing contemporary design practice. I loved Wood's maximalist approach and the range of projects which were featured. It also highlighted her own collections and how her work draws on these. I loved her cups and saucers treated to stain as they are used inspired by her own stained tea mug. Each one’s pattern will develop in a slightly different way. It was also good to see work she had done during her year at the museum as a designer in residence. My favourite piece was this cabinet which started with a project to design handles for furniture which she describes as "the jewellery of furniture". Closes 25 January 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum looking at how the fashion industry can reduce its environmental impact. The show was divided into three sections looking at innovations in fabrics, design and how new tools such as AI are being used by designers and how our relationship with clothes is changing with an emphasis on repair and recycling. Each section highlighted a handful of innovative projects from fibres made from bulrushes in Manchester through the use of computer programs to reduce the need for prototypes and a shirt made in modular sections which can be remodelled. Closes August 2025    

Disappointing exhibition at the Design Museum on the creative process behind Tim Burton's movies. I am not a Burton fan so I don't think I was the intended audience for this show. It did include some lovely costumes and puppets but it was quite heavy on drawings which didn't mean a lot if you didn't know the film. I also found the layout a bit confusing and I sometimes struggled to match the information board to the artefacts. I really disliked a section on creative ideas which was set in a corridor with mirrors, lights and a floor painted in an illusionary floor. I found it very hard to concentrate on the art works in such an over sensory environment.   I’ve been told since that it referenced his Alice in Wonderland film. It was definitely a show for the geek and for once I wasn't one of them. Closed 26 May 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Calm exhibition at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre of new work by Adam Buick. The pieces were all the same satisfying shape in various sizes. Evidently, he incorporates stone and locally dug clay into his work which reminded me, as an idea, of a display I’d seen in another show earlier in the day by Kim Norton. I loved the very prefect shape of the work and the pale, textured glazes. Closed 29 March 2025

Interesting selling exhibition at Somerset House of contemporary and historical prints. Galleries had taken space and there were some lovely displays. It was nice to see Abbott and Holder showing the two original First World War series which are being sold in aid of the Imperial War Museum again and I loved a display of Japanese prints from the Japan Print Gallery. There was a good mix of the old and the new but I was most drawn to the old particularly the early 20th pieces like a nice Sickert of the interior of a theatre, a nice C.R.W. Nevinson and a colourful Cyril Power. However my favourite piece was a complex print of Somerset House itself by Adam Dent. I always enjoy his work and I hadn’t seen this piece before.   Closed 23 March 2025  

Confusing exhibition at Somerset House by Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser) exploring the complex subject of Britain’s imperial salt monopoly in India. The show marks the refurbishment of the Salt Stairs which ran through the Salt Office which oversaw the national interest in salt. I say confusing as it helps to view the installation in the courtyard first as that is where the concept of the Inland Customs Line, a monumental 2500 mile-long ‘hedge’ composed of living vegetation created by the British to enforce salt taxation during colonial rule, was explained. Downstairs they just referred to this as the hedge which confused me and left me imagining a hedge catching salt. Downstairs there was an AI generated video to try to recreate the hedge from texts as no images of it exist. I’ll admit I’m not sure I understood. I did however like the archive display in what had been one of the offices which did flesh out the history a lot more. Closed 27 April...

Strange exhibition at Somerset House looking at the power and potential of soil. The show was a mix of science and contemporary art but became a bit repetitive after a while. There are only so many videos of soil microbes a girl can watch. The standout works for me were by Kim Norton “Soil Library” and “Kinship to Land”. In the first they take a small, standard amount of clay from different pieces of land and makes pinch pots from them and in the second they have asked people in Nunehead bury a piece of cloth in their garden to measure the health of the soil. I also liked   Agnieszka Kurant’s sculptures made by taking an imprint of the inside of termite nests and Ken Griffiths “The Sweetmans - A Country Cottage Calendar, 1974” where he had taken a photograph of an elderly couple in their garden every month for a year. Closed 13 April 2025 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard  

Comprehensive and fascinating four week online course from Paula Nuttall on the Sistine Chapel. As ever with Paula the talk was clear and well thought out with good illustrations. As usual she overran gloriously! Week one we looked at the early frescos after setting the scene and looking at the design of the chapel itself. I love the frescos but never thought about how the project was co-ordinated to give a consistency across the work of multiple artists. Paula’s theory was that Perugino was the master having already been working in Rome and as he painted the most prominent frescos and the altarpiece. Week 2 we looked up to the next stage of the decoration and Michelangelo’s ceiling. I had recently done a course on the young Michelangelo with Paula so this felt like an extension of that. We looked at how the artist painted this massive undertaking from its inception to its unveiling. I was particular interested in the section on his influences. Week 3 was Raphael’s tapestries a...

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades looking at Vanessa Bell’s early Modernist works. I had assumed this would be a standard book talk as the speaker, Wendy Hitchmough, has recently written a biography of Bell but instead she decided to focus on Bell’s early Modernist works and to discuss how radical they were. This made it a lot more interesting and in depth that I had expected. She began by discussing how Bell encountered the Post-Impressionist via helping to organise the 1910 show of their work in London then looked at the effect this art had on her portraits, particularly of her sister, Virginia Woolf. She next focused on three major works “Studland Beach”, “Mother and Baby” (now lost)   and “Nursery Tea” all from 1912 talking about their radical composition and subject matter and how that was informed by Bell’s experience as a woman and mother. She concluded by talking about how Bell created spaces where women could meet and show art such as the Grafton Group and...

Novel exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery of a series of statements shown around the walls. The website describes these as “50 statements on paper on walls from the mind of why.” They were shown with no introduction other than an email provided sent with them to say each work should be printed on A4 paper and shown in any order. Having moaned about the lack of explanation in the previous show I actually really liked it in this one. Many of the statements were witty and engaging and I found myself laughing out loud as well as musing on their truth. It was a lovely palate cleanser! Closed 20 March 2025

Incomprehensible exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery of a selection of contemporary works on the theme of a fragile world. Curated by Benjamin Murphy and Nick JS Thompson of Delphian Gallery, there was very little explanation of the theme or the works which had no labels. On the one hand it did get you to stop and look but with no guide to conceptual art it is too easy to dismiss it and move on. I did use the QR code given for more info but could only find a title and artists name but still no description or explanation. It seems to take a lot of effort to find out very little. That said I thought this installation was fun but in the spirit of the show I’m not going to tell you anything about it. Closes 19 March 2025  

Colourful exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery of new work by Dominic Beattie. These were bright geometric abstracts sometimes layered in a collage style. I loved the precision of the work and the way the colours sang against each other. Interestingly I had spotted a piece by him I’d liked in the main show in the galley at the time on flowers in art and design in the section for early career artists and liked it. Closed 19 March 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery showcasing the work of four recent art graduates. The four artists Qinyao Dai, Hsin Hwang, Shayla Marshall and Jahnvi Singh, all look at identity, storytelling, and narrative. I wasn’t that taken with any of them. I think my favourite was Shayla Marshall who produced installations of familiar objects full of references to hair. I also like the juxtaposition of an inflated figure and the paintings of Jahnvi Singh. Closed 19 March 2025

Novel and beautiful exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery looking at flowers in art and design. The show was divided into nine clear sections covering broad themes and categories for which flowers have been used such as fashion, science and new artists. I loved the fact it started with a room on the history including a lovely Dutch still life and large reproduction of Botticelli’s “Primavera”. This really grounded the show and you could trace clear links back to these works in the contemporary art.   One section just consisted of a fabulous installation of dried flowers by Rebecca Louise Law which provided a quiet, grounding moment in a vibrant show. I liked the variety of art shown and particularly the inclusion of old and new designers from Sanderson fabrics to Vivienne Westwood. There was also a good balance of fine art and photography. Stand out pieces included this bouquet made of spoons by Ann Carrington and a pair of Converse trainers by Cristina Alcantara. There was ...

Interesting online lecture from the Victoria and Albert Museum on a display there on the designer Pugin and Hardman who manufactured his metalwork objects. Angus Paterson and Max Donnelly explained how the museum had acquired a cache of 700 designs by Pugin for Hardman in 2023 which formed the core of the display and were being shown alongside some of the objects made from them. The took us through the lives of the two men and their correspondence then explained the themes of the show with examples from each section. I was particularly interested to hear about Pugin’s house The Grange in Ramsgate along with its adjoining church and library which you can now visit so that’s on the list!

Strange exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse of work by Izumi Kato. They were a mix of paintings of amoeba like creatures and painted sculptures made from found objects. The blurb said the “work explores the space between the physical and the spiritual, the human and the otherworldly” but I’m afraid it didn’t do a lot for me. The sculpture in the garden was effective. Usually the two shows on at Charleston speak to each other in some way, often picking a contemporary artist whose work mirrors an earlier genre in some way, but in this occasion, I couldn’t see the link to Post-Impressionism. Closes 2 November 2025  

Beautiful exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse on Bloomsbury’s role in inventing Post-Impressionism. The show was mainly based on examples of pictures from after Impressionism from the Barber Institute of Fine Art including a late Renoir used to discuss the change in style and the variety of this work. It then also looked at Roger Fry’s role in organising the 1910 exhibition of the work and how he and a journalist coined the phrase. I loved the inclusion of a set of cartoons by Henry Tonks mocking the endeavour. The culmination of the show was “The Cezanne in the Hedge” the painting, infamous in Bloomsbury lore, which Maynard Keynes brought back from a buying trip to France after the First World War and left in a hedge at Charleston as he had too much luggage to carry up the path. It was lovely to see it return. I wonder if it remembers?! Closes 2 November 2026 Review Telegraph  

Interesting online discussion from the National Gallery focusing on posing. Aliki Briane, artist and art historian, interviewed two contemporary artists who make work by posing for images. Peter Braithwaite, opera singer and artist, recreates historical portraits of black figures, and Dominic Blake, is a life model at the Royal Academy as well as being an art theorist and has taken the modelling out of the studio into other spaces. I enjoyed their insights but I would have been interested to hear them talk more widely about the work of models over the centuries and about what it is like to pose for long periods rather than just posing as an art form.

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on their current exhibition on 14th century Siena. One of the curators, Laura Llewelyn, guided us through the show and the four artists it features. She explained how the aim of the show was to look at a crucial moment in Western art where painting came to the fore as the major art form. I had been to see the show a few days before and loved it so this was a useful chance to fill some of the gaps I’d missed when I was there and to understand more about the objects which had been chosen and how, in many cases, multi-piece altarpieces had been reunited. Llewelyn was particularly helpful in setting the scene both in terms of history but also in explaining the non-painting pieces in the show used to show influences and give examples of the objects in the paintings and which would have been seen around them.

Surprising exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits by Munch. I say surprising as it was relatively cheerful. Munch’s expressionist work can feel quite full on and miserable but I got sense of friendship and communities. The works were arranged by how he knew the sitter with sections on family, Bohemians, dealers and collectors and supporters. There was a sense of sadness though, bordering on the comical as you read the labels and many of the sitters died young or were involved in other tragedies. The bold colours struck you and in the enclosed space particularly in the end room of full length works you felt you were walking among a group of friends. I will moan though about the placement of some of the room labels and some pictures in the spaces between displays which had been created. There wasn’t enough space for people to stop and read and it created bottle necks particularly at the busy members’ preview I attended. Closes 15 June 2025 Reviews Times ...

Lovely outdoor exhibition in Soho Square of this year’s pictures in a project to document New Year’s day over 24 years. On the first day of 2005 24 photography students from Central St Martin’s were allocated an hour of the day to photograph. They decided to continue the project and each year they move on an hour. From the look of the pictures some of them have now moved aboard and some look more domestic that those taken 20 years ago. Shout outs to David Mazda’s picture of a boat and Candida Jones’s “Meditation” of a man on a bench with memorial flowers. I like the way the pictures are displayed in the traditional heart of partying London in the open air. I last saw this show 5 years ago and will be fascinating to see how the project develops.   Closed 19 March 2025

Vibrant exhibition at the Royal Academy of art from Brazil from about 1910 to 1980 known as Brazilian Modernism. The art was bright and engaging and I liked the organisation of the layout into ten artists giving space to each which also led roughly to a chronological narrative. I love early modernism and found myself drawing parallels with other art that I know well like the Bloomsbury Group. I was interested to see that many of the earlier artists trained in or came from Europe, such as Alfredo Volpi from Lucca, whereas the later ones tended to be untrained and have started in other professions like Djanira  Da Motta e Silva who had been a seamstress. There were some beautiful portraits which punctuated the show but I think my favourite work was Tarsila do Amaral’s “Farm with Seven Piglets” from 1943. A fun picture with an engaging title. I was interested to see the 1944 show of Brazilian art held at the Royal Academy featured as I had seen an excellent exhibition about i...

Strange exhibition at the Royal Academy featuring work by four second-year students studying at the Royal Academy Schools. I do like to see these annual series of shows but as ever do wish they would offer some explanation of the works. It would be good practice for the artists too to learn how to describe and promote their work. The stand outs this time were the two painters both of which seemed to have hidden elements in their work, drawing you in for a closer look. Mohammed Adel presented dark, monotone works like this one entitled “Living Room”. The lighting was such in the show that it was only when looking at my photo of it that I saw the detail. Francisca Pinto’s worked looked like pillars of fire but writhing in them you found figures. One was called “The Room Where You Are” and think it did show the exhibition gallery itself therefore putting you in the picture and yet transporting you to a different world. Closed 30 March 2025  

Bright exhibition at Hauser and Wirth of work by Swiss artist Verena Loewensberg. I hadn’t come across Loewensberg before but I liked the geometric abstract works with a sense of the 3D. Evidently she was a leading figure within the influential Zurich school of concrete artists but these works are from later in her career break away from that genre. I’m not sure what this means so I am off to Google but funnily enough I came across the idea of concrete artists in a later show that day. Closed 17 April 2025

Small exhibition at the British Museum celebrating works left to the museum by the dealer, Kirsten Schubert. Schubert left 10 works but has donated a further 45 during his lifetime some of which were also featured. They ranged from modern masters like Picasso and Degas and artists he had represented such as Bridget Riley. I loved this early Riley which is hinting at her abstracted work to come but keeps a recognisable landscape. I also liked this Degas copied after a drawing in the Uffizi. Closed 21 April 2025  

Exquisite exhibition at the National Gallery of art from 14th century Siena. I love this style of early art but was worried that the show might feel quite dry however it was quite the opposite. The display and storytelling made these works come to life. Although the show was built around four painters Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers, others were brought in and there were some fabulous examples of sculpture. I loved one room which showed the pictures with examples of objects in them or that would have been used around them. Best of all was the narrative of the show and the way it highlighted the humanity of the work which to modern eyes could look archaic. I loved some of the details such as a man playing bongos and a dancing angel. They also told stories of the artists and I was touched by Lando di Pieto who put prayers he had written inside a Crucifix he made. I also liked how the show broadened out to look at how Sienese artists travelled and were used by ...

Fun exhibition at Woolwich Works presenting an installation of a Windrush generation living room. The work was curated by Tony Fairweather’s Windrush Collection which aims to save original artefacts from the Windrush era. It sets up a living room of the period with clashing patterns and full of objects. The installation is accompanied by various events such as book readings. It was fun seeing this in a busy arts centre and café which made it stand out more and yet feel part of the space. Being a purist I’d like to have seen an old school tv being used, to advertise events within the show, rather than a modern monitor. It’s also interesting to think about what makes it Windrush, as a lot of the artefacts would have been seen in my grandma’s house of the same era. She definitely had that carpet! Closed 16 March 2025

Exuberant exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and art of the performance artist Leigh Bowery. I’ve always been intrigued by Bowery’s work, focused on his own body, since discovering the wonderful portraits of him by Lucien Freud and here it was laid out in rooms designed to look like his home and the clubs he ran and frequented. There was an interesting mix of costumes, archive material and photographs and paintings of him so it represented both him as an artist and as a muse. You got a real sense of him as a person and of a group of friends. It was interesting to have already done the Outlaws show at the Fashion and Textile Museum which covered similar territory. Like that show it was also a good one for people watching as many of the punters seemed to come from a similar world. Closes 31 August 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard