Cathy's Art Diary

Fun exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery telling the story of the cities Bangladeshi owned curry houses. The show traced the history of these restaurants from the first restaurant to serve curry in the 1940s, through the first curry house in 1954 to the present day. This showed the social history of a largely unrecorded community. It also looked at the role curry houses came have come to play in British society. There were super copies of menus and restaurant ephemera but most fun were the recreations of place settings though the years and an installation of an almost complete interior from a restaurant in Bristol. There was also a recreation of a kitchen and the staff living quarters. The only thing missing from the show was the smell, oh and maybe a tasting plate! Closed on 14 January 2018  

Strange exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery looking at stories of colonialism as they pertain to Birmingham. The show was curated by six different people as the commentary said that “there can be no neutral voice” on the subject of colonialism. However I didn’t feel it hung together as a whole. The most disturbing section looked at how eugenics was applied to non-British people and included two beautiful heads by Marguerite Milward who made ideal busts men and women of different races. There was a section on Kenyan independence which pointed out that the case for compensation for wrongful arrests is still going through the British courts. The show also looked at Joseph Chamberlain who was a great advocate of colonialism in the Government but had previously been a much revered mayor of Birmingham. There was also a wall of pictures from the collection which reflected the themes of the show including work by Lubiana Himid and drawings by Epstein. Clo...

Interesting exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery of photographs by Kathe Buchler taken in Germany during the First World War. These were lovely sharp images of the German home front including pictures of her own family, working children and women doing the jobs of men at the front.   I loved the poignant picture of her son and a friend playing soldiers from 1909 shown with one of her daughter’s as Pierrots. I also liked the series of women doing men’s jobs including a female window cleaner. They all looked happy and empowered by their roles. The photographs were shown alongside examples of work by British female photographers of the First World War including Christina Bloom, who I’d come across before in an exhibition of her work at the Museum of London. There was also a display of photographs of Birmingham in the First World War including one of children on a float labelled “War Made us Fatherless”. Closed on 14 January 2018  

Thought provoking exhibition looking at how contemporary artists have been influenced by the rapid development of technology. The show featured work both using technology and influenced by it. There was a rather disturbing video installation by Rachel Maclean on the sexualisation of childhood using a Disney/pop video style which drew you in to difficult issues which engaging imagery. I liked Brian Griffith’s antiquated super computer made of card board boxes and Ryan Gander’s installation including a recording of his Great Aunt talking about Radio 4! It was lovely to see Marcus Coate’s “Dawn Chorus” again. It is an installation of screens showing people in their morning routines to a sound track of them singing the dawn chorus. It’s hard to explain but is very beautiful. He recorded the dawn chorus, slowed it down to human pitch, got people to sing at that pitch then speeded it back up to represent he bird sound.   I saw it before at Fabrica in Brighton and find it ver...

Thought provoking exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery looking at views of city life by contemporary artists. It gave a rather bleak view of cities, as an urbanite, I would like to have seen a bit more about the attractive side of city living not just the bleak inner city side. I did however like the film of derelict house with it’s windows being smashed by Jochem Hendricks which reminded me of a game of Wackamole as you were waiting to spot which window would get broken next. Also the film footage of Las Vegas by Nicholas Provost which showed an image and it’s mirror image moving like a slow kaleidoscope.

Travelling exhibition at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Birmingham is the first venue for this lovely exhibition of 10 drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci from the Royal Collection. They are a perfect selection of drawings to give an overview of his work covering anatomical works, designs, maps and much more. It included iconic images such as the head of Leda and a design for the great equestrian statue in Milan. I went on a quiet Wednesday morning but there was still a small queue to get in and signs round the gallery to show that at peak times, I guess weekends, the queues can be more than 2 hours long. It is great to see art being so popular.

Nice little exhibition of prints at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery bequeathed by Tessa Sidey, Curator of Prints and Drawings at BM&AG for nearly 30 years who died last year. I am sure this was just a taster of the collection but represented many of the great artists of the late 20th century. There was a lovely Lucien Freud print of a large woman with a tattoo. There was also a nice collection of studio pottery which Tessa had collected and used.

Great to see this exhibition at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery of some of the items found in the hoard of Saxon treasure found in Staffordshire in 2010. Having see the news stories about this I was surprised at how small the items were. It became obvious that it must have been booty from war as it seems as if all the gold had been stripped from weapons. The quality of the garnet and gold work was wonderful and if this was taken during battle what must that battle have looked like with all the gold encrusted weapons. I think the shear quantity means this was off real weapons not just ceremonial bling. I was impressed listening to local people in the exhibition who had obviously been more than once and were telling each other which items had changed since they last saw it. They felt a real connection to the items. It also showed how the conservation work was a work in progress.