Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by the photographer Catherine Opie. I'd seen an early show by Opie at the Walker Gallery in 2014 which had stayed with me, so I was interested to see more of her work. As the blurb says Opie "makes photographs that question the who, how and why of representation". For me, what gives them weight, is their referencing of art historical work. I loved that more of her work was shown around the gallery with older portraits. Opie is a Lesbian and there is lots of references to her community and to different types of family. The works were shown in series and were well explained. Closed 31 May 2026 Reviews   Guardian Telegraph

Poignant exhibition at Tate Modern of photographs of Elizabeth Taylor’s house and possessions by Catherine Opie taken just before and after Taylor’s death. Opie got access to the house as she and Taylor had the same accountant but she never met Taylor. The pictures form a portrait of a person without showing the person themselves and record the opulent and the personal. The only picture of Taylor is a photograph of the famous Andy Warhol print which starts the sequence. The rest of the pictures record rooms and the detail of her possessions such as her make-up and handbags, shown reflected in a mirror in the picture I’ve used for this article. I loved the pictures of the garden including beautiful roses and a fish in the pond. Closes 17 November 2019

Interesting exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery of photographs by Catherine Opie of her friends in the gays and trans community. There were some beautiful images such as one entitled “James 1993” but I wanted to be shown happy liberated people at home in their skins and I hoped that was the point but in fact I felt I was seeing quite sad images in some cases. The show played with sterotypes yet in doing so seemed to create new ones.