Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful exhibition at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull looking at the different ways artists have looked at how the sea has shaped our culture and imagination. I loved the mix of older, modern and contemporary work in this show and the fact it included ten new commissions developed with leading marine scientists. It looked at how we have viewed the sea and the environmental impact of our relationship with it. It was nice to see some Martin Parr photographs of the sea side included. His work seems to be appearing everywhere at the moment. Also to see some 19th century scrimshaw, carving on whale teeth. Tactica Dean’s “Roaring Forties” was there which I last saw hung alongside Turners at the Tate. Sadly we didn’t get to see the second half of the show over the road at the Hull Maritime Museum as we ran out of time. The picture I am using was a beautiful new work by Alexander Duncan which looked like a pile of rocks but was discarded polyurethane and polystyrene moulded by ...

Fascinating exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery exploring modern and contemporary artists responses to the naked human figure. It looked at the greater honesty modern artists bring to the subject as they abandon the traditional ideas of the idealisation of the body and life drawing. It focused on three artists, Lucian Freud, Ron Mueck and Spencer Tunick, although it also used other works from their own collections and good loans to put these artists in context. It was a nice touch to include a preparatory study of Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe by Manet as this work caused such a scandal when it was first shown, depicting a nude woman with clothed men. It was also nice to see a Stanley Spencer of Patricia Preece. The first room was devoted to Ron Mueck strangely realistic sculptures despite being unrealistic in scale. I find them quite hard to look at as they seem to creep into your space and challenge your perceptions but I do find then beautiful and it was nice to see a collec...

Interesting exhibition at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull to examine the themes in a picture on loan from the Royal Collection, Rembrandt’s “The Shipbuilder and his Wife”. It’s a picture I know well from various exhibitions at the Queen’s Gallery but it was nice to see it stand alone and to see it’s various themes explored in more detail. What a lovely picture to lend to a sea faring town. It was a lovely chance to look in more detail at the picture rather than thinking of it in the context of other works. I’d not realised before that he is in the process of drawing the designs for a ship and I love the paraphernalia of his work on his desk. I also love the sense of his wife rushing into the room to give him a letter and of course the beautifully painted faces. It gave the gallery a chance to explore the theory that Rembrandt spent several months in Hull in 1661, an idea promoted by the antiquarian George Vertue. It was lovely to see Virtue’s original notebook there lent by...

Nice refurbishment of the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. I have always been fond of this gallery and its gem of a collection and it was nice to see it looking spruced up. I was pleased that the space hadn’t been altered that radically. A new café and bookshop had been added but it was nice to read that most of the money had been spent on improving the lighting, air conditioning etc to protect the pictures and enable them to attract prestigious loans. The gallery shows the collection off well and I like the way the room designs reflect the art shown in them. I liked the room upstairs which looked at the history of the gallery and it’s collection, highlighting some of the main donors. It was nice to see some old friends such as the large Richard Carline of his family and friends including Stanley Spencer and his wife, Richard’s sister, Hilda and there is a nice collection of sea pictures reflecting the city it sits in. Review Times