Cathy's Art Diary

Innovative exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall looking at 50 years of skate boarding in the undercroft there. The show was actually in the covered bit of the undercroft behind the skateboard area. It was slightly odd in that it was mainly videos shown on 5 or 6 screens with a timeline round the room however I found myself getting sucked in by the timeline with details of how it built up and how it’s been threatened over the years. I didn’t have very long to watch the videos, but they seemed to be the stories of users of the space over the years. The timeline had mentioned a lot of films which had been made there so boarding and film making seem to have gone hand in hand. I loved the fact you sat on benches like skateboard ramps to watch the films which were shown one by one across all the screens. Closed 21 June 2026 Review Evening Standard

Surprising fair at Glynde Place specialising in ceramics. I say surprising as it was huge! Having been to an event at the house before I expected a few stalls around the house but instead it was set in marquees in the extensive grounds. We had gone to see our friend Eve Shepherd’s sculptural work and were pleased to see she had won a prize. However, we also discovered lots of beautiful and enticing things. I was so tempted to buy but resisted as I already have more small bowls and mugs than a girl will ever need. The visit was enhanced by it being a gloriously sunny day. Closed 24 May 2026

Passionate interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival of the author and art historian, Katy Hessel. Interviewed by Jon King, Hessel, author of the now famous "The History of Art Without Men" was discussing her new book "How to Live an Artful Life" which brings together daily quotes from artists and writers on creativity to inspire. I was astonished at how well she remembered quotes. The discussion broadened out into the barriers people face going into art galleries and the role of art. I loved Hessel saying that art is the truest representation of a time. The event had been due to have another speaker, Kate Bryan, who has written "How to Art" who had to pull out at the last minute. Hessel ably filled the evening but a second voice might have broadened the discussion.

Charming interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with the artist, Rose Wylie Wylie was amusingly interviewed by the actor James Norton who owns a painting by her. He was very good at giving her space to speak, reserving questions for when they were needed but not taking a dogged approach to ask them all. Wylie was open and witty. Jennifer Higgie, art critic and editor of Frieze, was also on the panel to add a commentary but I suspect also as backup in case Wylie, who is 92 had struggled, which she did not. Wylie was guided to talk about a selection of her work which was being shown on screens which led her to muse on the titles of her works such as one called "Jumbo Meat Cleaver" because it was in the shape of a meat cleaver, the role of text in her work and the role of fame in her work. There were some brilliant quotes from her, "The older you get the more memories you have. The more you have to work with", as we laughed at one o...

Moving discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival examining a joint project between the Imperial War Museum and Liberty to look at creativity in war and imprisonment. The catalyst had been the experience of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was on the panel, of getting Liberty material she had collected over the years, sent to her when she was imprisoned in Iran and the benefits of being able to be creative during that time. She talked about how she had shared the material with fellow inmates and other creative endeavours they had shared. James Bulgin and Rebecca Newell from the museum brought an insight into how Zaghari-Ratcliffe's experiences had chimed with their collection and they shared other moving stories of creativity in confinement with illustrations form the collection. Ester Coen, an art historian who has been working with Liberty on their 150th anniversary celebrations talked about the idea of working with Zaghari-Ratcliffe to design thre...

Thin exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse on the campaigning Gorilla Girls. The show brought together a number of their groundbreaking posters displayed multiple times as if on a street or the external walls of a gallery. The room was dominated by their iconic "Do Women Have to Be Naked…" poster which looked amazing in the space. Other posters were shown in groups. I found reading them interesting as they weren't always as strident as I had assumed and many were making sensible suggestions to art galleries about how to address issues of inequality, many of which I have seen institutions responding to. I just say thin as it concentrated on the posters as art objects, but I would have liked to see more about other work the group has done and some analysis of its effects. Closes 6 September 2026

Dense exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse looking at the history of the Hogarth Press. The press was started by Virginia and her husband Leonard in 1917 with the aim of publishing authors with radial new voices who might otherwise not get into print. They also treated books as art objects, commissioning striking book covers. I say dense about this show as the displays were mainly of books and it was very text heavy in its explanations. I am a self-confessed Bloomsbury nerd so I loved it, but I imagine if you were new to the subject it might leave you a bit cold. I was at the house for the start of the Charleston Festival so followed up my visit to the exhibition with the first two talks of the event, both on the Hogarth Press. The first brought together two current publishers with a similar ethos, Margaret Busby and Sharmiane Lovergrove in conversation with Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize.   This was followed by a gala style performance with Anton Lesser readin...

Bold exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery of paintings of London by Jock McFadyen. The first room featured his paintings of the London Underground shown with a soundscape by Jem Finer, one of the founding members of The Pogues. They were very atmospheric and you could almost smell that dank smell of the stations. The soundscape really added to this. The next room showcased his large paintings of overground London. I loved this one of railways arches and one which made me smile as a homebase appeared over the horizon like a sunrise. The last room looked at his early paintings of people which I felt were less successful. I was interested to read that it was a year as Artist in Residence at the National Gallery in 1981 which changed his style and made him look to the world outside for inspiration. Closes 20 September 2026 Review Times

Third in a series of exhibitions at the Barbican showing the work of a contemporary artist alongside pieces by Alberto Giacometti. This iteration featured Lynda Benglis whose ethereal plaster wall sculptures echo Giacometti's practice of making plaster models for his sculptures. He also left some pieces as coloured plaster and Benglis had also begun to paint her work in bright colours with glitter. My favourite pieces in the show however were sections of the plaster walls of Giacometti's studio walls on which he had sketched ideas. Closed 31 May 2026

Surprising exhibition at the Barbican on the life and work of Columbian artist, Beatriz Gonzalez. I went along on the basis I try to go to all major exhibitions and wasn't really sure what Gonzalez did but I was entranced. Starting on the upper floor the show looked at how she started off in art and how from early on she based her painting on found images but using bright colours. I loved an early set of paintings based on Vermeer's which deconstructed the images into shapes and colour.   She also commented on contemporary events from the papers including this set on a couple who had committed suicide and some strange ones of the British royal family. On the lower floor they used the large space to feature her work painting furniture with Old Master images and my favourite piece was this dressing table with a Raphael. I want it! There was also a large version of Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe" which stretched from the floor to the balcony above. Her...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery reflecting on their Wright of Derby exhibition. Matthew Morgan thought about what he had been struck by from the exhibition and from course he had taught, a couple of which I had done. I’m not sure he brought anything new in this talk but it was good to take a moment and think about what it had highlighted about the period and Wright’s art. I got most from the Q&A session where I learnt that Wright probably met Hogarth and how prints of pictures in the annual Royal Academy shows weren’t for sale at the show but could be bought from printers in St James who quickly produced copies which were circulated throughout the country.

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their Zurbaran exhibition. I’d been to the show the day before and loved it so it was still fresh in my mind when Francesca Whitlum-Cooper and Daniel Ralston, led us though it explaining the theme of each room and introducing the main works in the show. They talked us through the artist’s early career from which no work survives then described the works he painted on his return to Seville in the 1620s including this mysterious picture of “The Apparition of St Peter and St Peter Nolasco”. They went on to the rooms of works for the religious orders including a massive altarpiece for a church just outside Cadiz, paintings of single saints including the gallery’s own wonderful St Francis, a look at subjects which he repeated, work for the royal court and to be exported to the America’s, still-lives by him and his son and finally works for private devotion from his later years. This was a good comprehensive introducti...

Surprising statue in Waterloo Place off Pall Mall by Bansky. I say surprising as in true Bansky fashion it appeared overnight. I popped to see in it case it doesn't hang around and, as it's made of fibre glass, I'm not sure how well it will stand up to the elements. I joined about 50 people gazing and taking selfies. It looks impressive in the space and I took it as an anti-Reform comment and a warning against striding forward with a nationalist idea but blinded by that doctrine to the subtleties of the situation but that might just be me writing on the day of the local elections. From photos I had assumed it had a matt bronze like finish but in fact it had subtle white/grey highlights which make it more visible and distinct. Closes? Who knows! Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Stunning exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on the 17th century Spanish artist Zurbaran. I love Zurbaran and had been looking forward to this show and it didn’t disappoint. The monumental   work looked amazing in the space and was given room to breathe. It was shown in a simple way which evoked the religious settings in which it would have originated. I loved the stark Crucifixion scenes set against black and the single figure saints reminiscent of Spanish polychrome wood sculptures. It was moving to see three panels of a massive altarpiece reunited. There was a beautiful room of still-lives by Zubaran alongside those of his son. It was a visceral moment when you realised his son had died in a plague aged just 29. The most surprising piece in the show was a huge painting of a head. Measuring about 6ft sq from a distance it was striking but I assumed it was an enlargement of a face from a painting but no it is, as described in the show, a colossal head, recently as...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the 17th century Portuguese artist, Josefa de Obidos. Carmen Rippolles from the University of Oregan who has recently published a book on Josefa introduced her, taking us through her life and art. She placed her as an artist of the Counter-Reformation influenced by Spain but creating a Baroque style for Portugal. I had never come Josefa before so it was fascinating to learn bout a new artist and see work that was unfamiliar to me. She worked across genres and medium but did create large altarpieces as well as small devotional works on copper and still-lives.

Excellent online six week course from the National Gallery examining six major texts on art from Vasari to John Berger. Amy Mechowski led us through the course with a format of her giving a lecture on the book and the author then inviting a speaker who has reacted to the work either via art or writing. This was a really good grounding in art historical thinking and the format led you to think more widely around the subject.  The books were : * Giorgio Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists” 1550 * Charles Baudelaire's “The Painter of Modern Life” 1863 * Ernst Gombrich’s “The Story of Art” 1950 * Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” 1936 * Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971 * John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” 1972   Guest speakers were: * Jenny Graham from the University of Plymouth who discussed how Vasari created the canon of artists and established the idea of what an artists should be. She then t...

Intriguing lecture at the National Portrait Gallery using works from the gallery to talk about sex in the Victorian era. Catherine Philips of The University of Bristol introduced us to a number of radical Victorian thinkers both campaigning for rights of sex workers of the time or introducing laws to limit sexual freedoms starting with Charles 'Boatswain' Smith, a Baptist minister in Stepney who established a refuge for sex workers, educating them to be domestic servants and finding them jobs with families moving out to the colonies. She moved on to Josephine Butler and Dadodhal Naoroji who fought to overturn the Contagious Diseases Acts and Annie Besant who republished a pamphlet of sexual education for which she was charged under the Obscene Publications Act. She then looked at Henry Labouchere who introduced the law to criminalise all male homosexual activity in the UK and Sir Richard Francis Burton who wrote about sexual practices he came across when travelling and t...

Intriguing exhibition at the British Museum examining the history of the Samurai. It was a beautifully designed show and covered from their origins in medieval Japan's civil wars through to the 19th century when they had become the elite, cultured ruling class. It also looked at their myths and l egacy. My only moan is, that as ever at the British Museum, the labels were quite long and wordy creating log jams partly because they were set low so if anyone leaned over to look at an object they blocked them. Add to that the fact that quite often they were a distance from the item they were discussing so you had to play a game to match the object to the label. There were some beautiful objects and plentiful use of intricate painted scrolls and prints. I think my favourite object was this charming small dish dated 1700-50 which I felt could be a contemporary shop. I also loved a book described as an I-Spy book for processions to enable people to identify the different clans as th...

Fascinating small exhibition at the British Museum highlighting a medieval ewer and its journey to Africa and back. Made in England between 1340 and 1405, the ewer later travelled to West Africa. In the 1880s it was photographed in a courtyard of the royal palace of the Asantehene, king of the Asante people, in Kumasi (in present-day Ghana). During the Anglo-Asante War of 1896 it was looted by British forces and later purchased by the British Museum. A second ewer, also taken in 1896 and shown in the same photograph, was presented to the Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment. This display reunites the two. It was amazing how one object could tell a little-known story of medieval trade, how English objects had been treated as sacred items in Africa and Victorian colonialism.   Closed 7 June 2026

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy focusing on the 17th century artist, Michaelina Wautier. The modern galleries at Academy had been decorated in dark colours to give an atmosphere contemporary to the art. It began by explaining how Wautier worked with her brother so sometimes their work is indistinguishable from each other and over the years some of her work has been attributed to him. The first room looked at the pairs' portraits with some lovely examples from each of them. It then moved on to religious and mythical work in rich Baroque colours before focusing on her major work "The Triumph of Bacchus" and other allegorical pieces. It was lovely to see another female artist being brought into the spotlight as I had done a lecture on the roots of feminist art history in the week however this show also got me thinking about how many artists generally have been forgotten or marginalised in favour of the well-known Old Masters as I had not only not heard of Mi...

Surprising exhibition at the Royal Academy on the art of Rose Wylie. From the pictures I'd seen in the press I'd assumed the work would look quite flat and cartoon like but in the flesh it was quite textured and the explanations made me realise it was a lot more nuanced that I'd assumed. I was also surprised at how huge a lot of the pictures were. The show was arranged in themes from her work influenced by being a child in the Second World War through to that which has been inspired by newspapers and current cultural themes. I admit the audience were all of a certain age (mine!) and mainly female and from conversations around me I realised they were engaging with the work and getting a lot from it. I am going to hear Wylie speak in a few weeks and I am looking forward to hearing more from her. Closed 18 April 2026 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Clever online lecture from the National Gallery looking at horses in art. Chiedza Mhondoro, assistant curator at Tate Britain, discussed the idea that how horses are shown in art reflects our relationship with them and the different roles they play. The talk was a little repetitive to begin with as she laid out those roles but came together when she returned to them with examples of three or four works of art and examples of each. It might have been better to combine the discussion of the roles and the examples from the start for clarity. The roles she covered ranged from agricultural use, transport, role in conflict, mythology, literature, recreation and sport and their place in the human imagination. She used a good range of examples from Stubbs to contemporary art.  

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the life and work of the 17th century artist Anthony Van Dyck. Jo Walton led us through the topic over two session taking us in detail through a selection of images from his early days in Antwerp, through working in various cities in Italy to working for the English court. We looked in detail at his work for Charles I, its symbolism and how Charles used the work to build an image of himself. We also looked at his work for other members of the court as well as he self-portraits. Finally we discussed how later artists have looked back to his work and his influence since his death.