Cathy's Art Diary

Moving exhibition at Cromwell Place by Piers Secunda responding to the only German concentration camp on British soil on the Channel Island of Alderney. I had obviously known about the occupation of the Channel Islands but had not realised there was a camp there for slave labourers to build fortifications. The majority of the work was prints of archive material and views of the island and its flora made with ink produced from cordite from ammunition abandoned by the Germans after the war. Each had a QR to a recording telling you more about the image and there were some horrific stories. There were also casts from a wall which have been analysed by a forensic scientist who concluded it was a wall used for executions. The show struck a good balance between presenting this as history and as art. It didn’t glamorise in any way but the artistic input made the pieces approachable and empathic. This show was organised by the Arc Gallery and it had been part of a series of shows at ...

Dense exhibition at Cromwell Place of work by Eastern European female surrealists. Organised by European ArtEast Foundation the show looked sparse with little information when you entered, but there was a comprehensive free catalogue with extensive biographies of the artists and commentaries on the pictures, however it was quite cumbersome to use as you went round. It was nice to see the pictures on blank walls but it did make you realise how useful labels are. I’m not a great fan of surrealism but I liked some of these pieces such as Milena Pavlovic-Barili’s fashion drawings for Vogue, Eva Kmentova’s sculpture and Toyen’s more conventionally surrealist work. Closed 30 April 2023  

Interesting exhibition at Cromwell Place for the National Portrait Gallery of this year’s shortlisted pictures in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. The show was at Cromwell Place as the National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and it made by a good alternative venue even if the space was more limited. I did however find the reflection off the pictures a problem as it made them hard to view without seeing yourself in the image. It might have been good to use more non-reflective glass. I went to a member’s preview event at which a speaker, sorry whose name I didn’t catch, talked us through the awards and photographs. She taught me different things to look for in photos plus learned that the works are judged without knowing the artist or the stories. There was inevitably concentration on Covid and quite local pictures to the photographers. There were a number where people had moved in together for lockdown with particularly tender pictures of older parents. Do...