Cathy's Art Diary

Exciting exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of a selection of work by Anish Kapoor. I love the way Kapoor’s work alters the space around it and creates optical illusions. In this case the first work you see is a huge red inflatable which takes up the whole first gallery and blocks the usual route around the space. When you work your way to the other side via various other spaces it is blocked again by a series of smaller red balls. One room is devoted to his works in the deep black to which he has exclusive artistic rights, Vantablack which absorbs 99.6% of light. Painted on walls it gives a sense of a deep hole and on objects it flattens the shape. People stop and stare and seem to be drawn into the work although others just take selfies. My favourite pieces were the highly polished sculptures on the terraces which both reflect and distort the space around them. Closes 18 October 206 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Exhibition at the Royal Academy showing recent work by Anish Kapoor. It had more of a feeling of a ‘happening’ than an exhibition. There were just a few works but what there were were big anf the viewers became part of the exhibition. I loved the big block of wax moving through the galleries but did worry that they might never get the doorways clean. I loved the fact that lots of people stood patiently waiting for the block to clear a door and then all clapped! The canon blowing wax at a wall is exciting but not as anarchic when you realise it goes off every 20 minutes in a side room which you have to queue up to go in. I’m not sure what it was all about but I didn’t care, I just liked it! Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Independent

This years Brighton Festival’s guest artistic director was the artist Anish Kapoor. One of the features of the festival was a trail of works of art by Anish throughout the city. I only managed to get to two of the venues but both were stunning. Fabrica, the arts venue in the city centre, has two works on show “1000 names” a series of what looks like piles of pigments in red, yellow and white and “Blood Relations” a work with Salman Rushdie with a rather violent story round the edge of a box lined in red on one side and with rather bloody looking rags in the other. “C-Curve” was a wonderful curve of steel on the South Downs way near the Chattri, a war memorial to the Indian soldiers who dies at the Royal Pavillion hospital in the First World War. It was a long walk up to the C-Curve and I must admit I whinged a lot on the way there (I’m a city girl I don’t do walking!) however it was worth it. The outside edge of the curve reflected you as you walked towards it and placed you in the fa...