Cathy's Art Diary

Dramatic installation at the Barbican by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama. The work was a huge pink, handwoven covering for the top of the building with 100 ‘batakaris’, robes worn by Ghanaian kings, embroidered onto it. The pink and purple panels were made by hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale in Ghana and in the foyer is a fascinating video on the making of it and a chance to feel the material. Close up it was more nuanced than it looks at a distance. I loved the dramatic effect, particularly the way that it reflects on the buildings around it and the way it is shaped around the architecture of the building. It is also fun to see it from inside in the upper floors. Closes 18 August 2024 Reviews Times Telegraph

Thoughtful exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at the use of textile in artistic practice since the 1960s often with subversive ends. The show featured 50 artists arranged in themes starting with a series of rooms on the first floor then moving to the large space downstairs focusing on works on the theme of ancestral threads, work inspired by the artists’ heritage. I loved the large open downstairs area which showed so that they spoke to each other. I would however make a plea for larger or better placed labels! There was a lot to read and a number of the middle aged, including me, were setting off alarms when we had to move in close to read them. They were quite long and quite woke too. I loved the breadth of the show but it would have benefited from a bit more history. It mentioned quilts which were maps to enslaved people to places to access escape routes and I would have loved to see one and how can you discuss textile and politics without a union banner?! I was...

Strange exhibition at the Barbican Curve Gallery of drawings by Soufiane Ababri. This was a new commission for the space called “Their mouths were full of bumblebees but it was me who was pollinated”. At the heart were a series of fairly explicit drawings of diasporic queer experience and queer nightlife. I say strange as the space was over curated to give an installation feel and yet the focus works, which weren’t that large, were rather overwhelmed by the space. I guess it was trying to represent a club but I found the bright red lit path and haze were rather disorienting and distracted from the pictures. Closed 30 June 2024 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard  

Interesting little exhibition at the Barbican celebrating the creation of an archive of the building. The show was a bit hidden away and small but it had some interesting pieces and an av display of the work they have done with Google Arts and   Culture to put the collection online, but I must admit I found it a bit clunky to use. I learnt that the rusticated effect on the concrete wasn’t the result of a poured mould but of workers pick hammering regular patterns on what had been planned to be a flat polished surface. You certainly looked at the piece of wall next to you differently. I also loved looking at a pair of builder’s shoes and the remains of his lunch which had been found at the lowest level of the building like an archaeological find which in guess it was. Evidently the display will keep changing, highlighting different stories and showcasing different objects so it’s well worth popping back. Closes 5 April 2024    

Thoughtful video installation in the Curve at the Barbican of works by poet, artist and filmmaker Julianknxx.   The work consisted of three interlocking videos. I found it really paid to walk to the last one and spend some time watching it, partly because it was the only area with seats. You did however find as you walked back that the imagery was repeatedly in then other works. I took away from it themes of memory, both individual and community based, I loved the use of choirs who I’ve realised since all sang the same refrain ‘We are what’s left of us’. This was balanced with beautiful film of different cities both European and African and contemporary dance. Closes 11 February 2024 Reviews Guardian Evening Standard

Fascinating exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery of portraits by Alice Neel. I liked the way the show started upstairs using the more restricted spaces to tell the story of her early life and work. Throughout I got an impression of a happy, friendly lady so was interested to read of her bouts of depression. Her personal life seems to have been a series of relationships but whatever the circumstance she seems to have stayed friends with the men or their families. I particularly liked the works she did for Roosevelt’s Public Works of Art Project in the Depression. Unlike her usual portraits these were naïve street scenes. Also upstairs it was a nice touch to show a contemporary film by Helen Levitt to show the life around Neel when she lived in Spanish Harlem. Downstairs concentrated on the work for which Neel is best known, her portraits from the 1960s onwards of the political and artistic world of New York. I love the way she caught the stance and gestures of people as well as...

Exquisite exhibition at the Barbican Curve of small portraits of influential Iranian women by Soheila Sokhanvari. These were beautiful works about A5 in size painted in great detail in egg tempera on vellum. They glowed with colour despite the faces and limbs being left black and white. It would have been good to know why that was. They were very much in the style of old Persian painting which I love. They were displayed as an immersive environment with the walls painted in a geometric pattern based on a tradition Islamic design and with a sound scape featuring female voices. I was shocked to read that it is illegal for women to sing in public in Iran. Most importantly the show highlighted the lives of these women with interesting biographies of them in the handout. In a little moan it would have been nice, given there was so much information, to have had printed guide. There was an online one via a QR code but I find those hard to read as I go round a show or a large print one ...

Excellent exhibition at the Barbican looking at art in Britain in the twenty years after the Second World War. Under 14 themes this show examined society in the period and how art reflected this. It covered the work of 48 artists many who were familiar to me but there were also new names to look out for in the future. I’m not sure I found a lot of the work attractive however I’ve never seen art that looked better in this rather brutalist space. The show was also good at highlighting important exhibitions from the period such as “This is Tomorrow” at the Whitechapel in 1956 as well as highlight artists who represented Britain at the Venice Biennales, a good way of giving a different shape to the period. New things I discovered included the work of John Bratby and Jean Cooke, a husband and wife whose art was used to challenge the idea of the home as a symbol of stability. Theirs was a turbulent relationship which was reflected in each of their paintings. Although the works were of...

Interesting exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at how masculinity has been considered in photography and art film since the 1960s. The show was divided into six sections;   the archetype;   power and patriarchy; fatherhood and family; Queer masculinity; Black masculinity and women on men revising the male gaze. It built an artistic and sociological view of the subject and opened up many ideas to continue thinking about. There were some stunning pictures and I’d highlight Rineke Dijkstra’s pictures of matador straight from the ring partly because I’d seen more work by her a few days earlier, Michael Subotzky startlingly heartless images of prisoners in South Africa and Peter Hujar’s pictures of gay men hanging out at the St Christopher Street pier, one of which is shown here. The photographer that stood out for me though was Hans Eijleboon with two series of pictures partially using versions of himself in the images. In one set he posed convincingly in the fa...

Videoed play made available by the Barbican on the Trial of the 17 th century female artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Two of the things I have been most sad to miss during this Covid-19 lockdown have been the Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery, which is hopefully being rescheduled, and this play which I was due to see at the Barbican. I’ve been an admirer of Artemisia’s work since reading a novel about her and of course seeing her work. I think her self-portrait in the Royal Collection is one of my favourite pictures. I was therefore delighted when an email popped up telling me about this videoed version of the play. Produced by Breach Theatre iot is largely based on the transcript of the trial of Agostino Tassi for breach of promise to marry Artemisia in the course of which she accuses him of rape. At its heart it is a classically, hopefully old fashioned, bad rape trail with witnesses brought to her bad character and the defendant allowed to cross examine her. It i...

Interesting exhibition at the Barbican looking at creative and scientific developments in AI using work by artists, scientists and researchers. I must admit I only did the free installations around the building. I didn’t have time to do the paid for exhibition section but I thought it was a nice touch to have a lot of free work particularly as it’s the school holidays and it is something that children can interact with. I began with the work shown, one of two by Universal Everything, where you stand in front of the screen and the avatar copies and learns from you movements. I must admit I felt a bit silly as a middle aged women standing waving my arms and legs around but it didn’t stop me. The results thought were a bit underwhelming. Good use was made of the long drop space in the middle of the building with a work called Totem by Chris Slater which used equations that model the behaviour of biological neurons and is therefore supposed to mirror emotions. I must admit...

Surprisingly good exhibition at the Barbican looking at the life and work of Lee Krasner. I say surprisingly good as anyone who follows me knows I’m not a fan of abstract art and I thought the art of the wife of Jackson Pollock would try by patience but I loved her! Maybe I understand female abstract expressionist work when the pictures by the blocks I just find annoying. I found this a much more joyous show than I expected. This show was really well arranged. For once it started upstairs in this space as it suited her earlier smaller works. I also liked the way it started with her smaller works made in the late 1940s after she’d married Pollock and then went back to show where the ideas had come from and he position in art circles of the time. I was fascinated by the section on when she supervised a War Services Project to design window store displays advertising war training courses. The upstairs section ended with Pollock’s death. You did realise what a shock it mus...

Strange exhibition in the Curve gallery at the Barbican of new work by Francis Upritchard.  The website calls it a “site-specific installation which draws from figurative sculpture, ceramics, glassblowing and more”. I’m afraid I found it a bit of hotch potch of work. I liked some of it but wasn’t sure how it hung together as a cohesive statement. I did think it had been displayed well in this strange space as different groups of work appeared as you walked round the curve. I liked the weird figures which welcomed you to the space and the set of ceramic pots with strange faces on them which reminded me of the Roman funeral urns I’d seen a few weeks in an exhibition of Roman Londoners. There was also an interesting take on the Parthenon Frieze at the end. Closes on 6 January 2019 Reviews Evening Standard

Colourful installation in the foyer of the Barbican Centre by Troika, a collaborative contemporary art group. The work consists of a scroll of slowly moving multi-coloured wide film running from top to bottom of the building via the light well so it can be seen on every level of the building. The colours blend into each other changing gradually like a sunset. It has the effect of slowly changing the look of the brutalist space around it and bringing in some much needed colour. Closes in May 2019

Fantastic exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at huge range of couples who influenced the avant-garde art world in the early 20th century. There was almost too much in this show and too many stories to follow up. From the first list of couples at the entrance that listed them in alphabetical order of the women I was hooked. The premise of the show was that modern art was about collaboration and mutual influence and to give all those involved an equal status. Throughout the show I loved the mix of art works and archive material. Where ever possible there were letters between the couples which gave them a chance to speak for themselves. There were also great explanations and commentaries. I really don’t know where to start! My beloved Bloomsbury Group were well represented with Virginia Woolf being linked to Vita Sackville-West on the fascinating lesbian section on the ground floor and Leonard on the second floor to look at the work of the Hogarth Press. Vanessa Be...

Dull exhibition at the Barbican Centre looking at the designs for the Barbican Centre cultural spaces and asking five contemporary architects to respond to the material.   It was interesting to read how the cultural spaces were designed from the inside out as they were the last phase of the development and had to be fitted into a restricted site so most of the performance spaces are below ground level.   I didn’t really understand the contemporary reactions to the design which weren’t well explained and seemed a bit obtuse. Closes on 11 November 2018  

Strange exhibition at Barbican of work by photographer Vanessa Winship.   I found these works quite self-conscious compared to the complimentary Dorothea Lange show. Lange was hidden behind her works but these seemed to be more about the view of the photographer. Some of them were staged which I found odd in documentary work.   There were seven projects represented here from pictures looking at the effect of the war in Kosovo to pictures taken during an American election campaign. I did find the labels a bit minimal and convoluted, what on earth does “a tradition in which combustible realities can be engaged through a lyrical and rigorously description approach” mean?!   I did like the set of pictures of school girls in Anatolia who all wear a variation on the theme of a blue dress with a lace collar. I loved the way they all looked the same at first glance but were subtly different.   Closed on 2 September 2018   Reviews Guardian Even...

Fascinating exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at the life and work of the photographer Dorothea Lange.   Lange is best known for her iconic US Depression era photograph “Migrant Mother” and there was a section of the show devoted to the picture and how it had been used over the years. I was particularly interested in how in later prints Lange had edited out the mothers’ thumb so you can date a print as pre and post thumb. It is a moving image and it was lovely to see the other pictures that were taken in the same session.   The show did say however that that image had overshadowed the rest of Lange’s career. She wasn’t one image but was one of the founders of documentary photography. She opened a studio in San Francisco in 1919 specialising in rather wistful portraits but after the Stock Market crash San Francisco filled with migrants and she started going onto the street to photograph them. This led to her working on reports with the social scientis...

Nice little exhibition at the Barbican looking at the design of the flats in the Barbican Centre. I was astonished to learn that more than half the population of the City of London lives in the Barbican. The architects Chamberlain, Powell and Bon recognised the need for different forms of living and there are more than 100 different types of flats in three towers and 17 designs of terraces houses. One of the aims of the project had been to get people back to living in the City after the war. The display included floor plans of the different types of flat alongside photographs of how people had adapted them. There were also models of the various types on internal and external staircases. Since 2001 any changes need to get listed building consent so it has become harder to adapt the space. I particularly fell for a flat with upside down arched windows! Closes on 16 April 2017

Strange installation in the Curve Gallery at the Barbican Centre by Bedwyr Williams. I’m afraid I just didn’t understand what this work was trying to say. I read the explanation a couple of times but didn’t really understand that either! There were things in it I liked like a stuffed goat and singing running shoes but I’m not sure what they meant or how they related to the other items. Closes on 8 January 2017