Cathy's Art Diary

Lovely selling exhibition at Abbott and Holder of a set of prints commissioned in 1917. The prints were commissioned by the British Government from 18 artists and are made up of two series depicting Britain’s efforts in the first Word War and its ideals. The works have been stored at the Imperial War Museum awaiting sale. They are now being sold in aid of the museum. The prints included works by some of my favourite artists of the period including Eric Kennington, Christopher Nevinson and William Nicholson. I thought the Efforts were more successful while the Ideals now felt overly symbolic. Closed 6 July 2024      

Excellent, comprehensive exhibition at the Imperial War Museum on intelligence and deception. The show set out its aim to look at how intelligence is collected and how and why deception is used. It was gently themed, mixing stories from different conflicts. There seemed to be a concentration on the first half of the last century although it did come up to date. There were lots of fascinating stories and I made lots of notes of things and people to look up later such as the German double agent Wulf Schmidt and Vera Atkins who investigated why over 100 secret agents in Europe in the Second World War didn’t return. Favourite objects included this dummy head to draw sniper fire to establish the enemy position in the First World War trenches, a fascinating room on decoy information on D-Day and a section on Karl Fuchs, who always fascinates me as my father worked at AERE where he was arrested. You also had to love the false footprint you could put on your feet so it looked like you w...

Fascinating lecture at the National Maritime Museum looking at the clothes worn by WRNS popularly known as the Wrens. Jo Horton outlined her research on Wrens clothing from when they were founded in the First World War to the 1950s. She had drawn on the museum collection and archives as well as interviewing a number of veterans and used touching quotes from those interviews. She looked at the uniforms and how the women adapted them to fit as well the different types of less formal work wear. She also talked about what they wore off duty and how they shared clothes. This talk was to mark Women’s History Month and was paired with another talk by the journalist, Vivien Morgan “Cross Dressed to Kill” about women who had gone to war disguised as men from the 17th century to the 20th. She described some fabulous characters who I want to look up.

Interesting exhibition at the National Army Museum looking at the work Alfred Munnings did as a war artist for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. Munnings was commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook and this work was pivotal in establishing Munnings as an influential post-war artist. It was well labelled with symbols to highlight three different themes, his experience of a war artist, the military importance of the event and the artistic features. It was nice to see drawings included in the show and in some cases shown with the finished painting. There was also a nice display of the equipment used by the cavalry that he was painting. I found the lighting rather poor for the paintings as there was a lot of reflection and it was sometime hard to find a place to stand so you could see the whole work. The show was arranged in interesting themes starting with the landscape work he did when he first arrived in France, his time with the cavalry and the work of the forestry units. The ...

Beautiful installation at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to commemorate the 72,396 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died on the Somme and have no known grave. This work by Rob Heard consisted of a small figure to represent each soldier which he bound in a small hand stitched shroud. These were then laid out in a geometric pattern and filled a section of the park. You could walk around the edge as well as going onto a raised platform to look over the work. It was a nice touch to also have the names of the all the soldiers being read out but the sound system was poor so I only realised when I was standing next to the person doing this. I found this work very moving. Each figure is in a bent shape in their shroud and do not feel at peace.   It’s also astonishing to look at them and realise that even more men died in the Battle, these are just the 72,396 with no known grave. It transformed the incomprehensible number into a visual representation which gave you a sense o...

Interesting outdoor exhibition in St James Park to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. This used lovely photographs by Michael St Maur Sheil of the landscape affected by the war to talk about issues raised by the conflict. It was beautifully arranged so that as you looked along the displays you saw a line of the pictures but each was accompanied by excellent explanations of each of the areas of the war and common themes it raised. I thought I knew a lot about the First World War but even I learnt new things from this such as the fact that the plastic surgeon Sir Harold Giles who worked at Sidcup to rebuilt men’s faces was a cousin of Sir Archibald McIndoe who did similar work in the Second World War with pilots injured by fire. Also that the Save the Children Fund was founded in 1919 to raise money for children in Central Europe and the Indian government lent Britain money to fund the war. This was the last in a series of touring exhibitions. I rememb...

Moving installation at the Tower of London to mark the century of the end of the First World War. Created by Designer Tom Piper and sound artist Mira Calix it filled the moat of the Tower with flames which were started by one flame being lit by a Yeoman of the Guard and this being spread gradually throughout the space. This was a beautiful spectacle but was very popular so the space was very crowded. I was meeting friends there and we just watched from the rim of the moat, once we had found each other! It’s strange to be directed in the opposite direction in which you want to go for crowd control reasons. I never worked out what people were queuing up for. I know before the event you could get tickets to go into the moat but not sure this is what people were queuing for as there didn’t seem to be many people down there. I got a good view from near the entrance to the Tower by standing in tip toe and peering over people’s heads but a much better one from the road to Tow...

Wonderful video installation at the Imperial War Museum by John Akomfrah representing the Africans who fought and took part in the First World War. Shown over three screens it mixed archive material and a newly shot narrative featuring a variety of the soldiers often show against a desert like backdrop surrounded by the flags of the nations involved. It memorialised both soldiers and porters. I’m going to have my usual video moan in that this work was 75 minutes long! A bit longer than you want to spend on one piece in an exhibition. However as this was so lovely I would like to go back and watch the whole thing. It would really help to advertise the start times so you could watch it properly from beginning to end rather than dipping in in the middle which I found a bit confusing, Closes on 31 March 2018

Innovative installation at the Imperial War Museum looking at remembrance rituals. Created by 59 Productions you walked through the three parts of this installation. You start in a video installation with the illusionistic effect of sands running out of a timer and an idea of the Hall of Remembrance that was planned but never completed. You then walk along a corridor and look into a very dark space where various minutes silence were played. I thought this was such a good idea. Each one included the preamble or end of the silence and of course none of them were actually silent. I loved the one from a football match which ended with a huge cheer.   The final room was white with the words from various memorials on the wall. All in all a very thoughtful piece. Closes on 31 March 2019

Moving installation at the Imperial War Museum of recordings of people’s memories of Armistice Day. These were played in a darkened room with pillars in the middle and neon strips on the walls. The light levels rose gradually during the sequence of recordings. The voices came from different speakers around the room and were in a wonderful variety of accents. The sound coming from around the room gave the whole thing a sense of life and movement. The stories were poignant and moving. I loved the chap who said he’d been marching to the front when they were met my other soldiers coming towards them announcing the war was over. In a very matter of fact voice he said “so we came back and buried our dead.” Also the nurse who saw five of her charges die on 11 November 1918 and couldn’t view it as a happy day. At the end there was a chap who’d lost a leg and was given an artificial one and told he could go now. He set off on a mile’s walk to a bus with his back pack and a poorly fi...

Fascinating exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looking at the end of the First War and the effects of it via the museum’s photographic collection. The show was nicely themed by looking at the effect on individuals, society and the world. The individuals covered the process of demobilisation and how the soldiers adapted back to civilian life. It looked at how the injured both in body and mind were helped or left to cope on their own. A large section looked at the effect of the end of the war on the people whose land was fought over with pictures of people returning to devastated farms and houses, an aspect of the war we tend to forget in this country. The society section looked at social changes with the end of the war such as worker rights and votes for women. It also looked at the decisions that were made around the rebuilding of Ypres with a fascinating set of pictures of the damage that were used to plan the reconstruction. Finally the show focused on the peace t...

Beautiful installation at the Imperial War Museum of the ceramic poppies which started their journey at the Tower of London. It was wonderful to see these poppies by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper again. The Weeping Window element of the original installation worked really well at the museum starting from a window in the rotunda and falling down the classical arcade. They made you look at the architecture of the building with a fresh eye as well as coming home and looking at my individual poppy again. It was touching to see a junior school queuing up for each class to have their photo taken in front of the display and for their teacher to explain the meaning of the poppy to them. Here’s hoping them remember. Closed 18 November 2018

Fascinating day   at Southwark Cathedral discussing the art of the First World War. The day had excellent speakers and was a real bargain! In the morning we had Rebecca Newell from the Imperial War Museum talking about the government war art schemes and the artists who took part. In doing so she gave us a good overview of the art of the period and the motivation behind its creation. The second talk of the morning was David Boyd Haycock comparing the life and work of Paul Nash and, one of my favourites, C.R.W. Nevinson, who had studied together at the Slade. I’d not realised that they were born and died in the same years. He discussed their war work plus the effect of the war on their subsequent work. In the afternoon we turned to the work of Sydney Carline with Jonathon Black. Carline, Stanley Spencer’s brother in law, was a pilot in the Italian campaign and produced extraordinary works influenced by his experience of flying and aerial battles. He also looked at Carline...

Poignant  installations throughout the UK to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. The idea is for communities all around the country to install either a silhouette of a First World War soldier or seated clear Perspex figures in indoor spaces. The silhouette is inspired by an iconic photograph taken during the war by Horace Nicholls. The work is the 2018 Armistice project for the charity Remembered which raises money for veterans’ charities and the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation. I obviously haven’t been all round the country to see these but the one which caught my eye was in Westminster Tube station and I spotted it quite late one evening. It must have appeared that day as I go through every day and hadn’t seen it before. It made me stop and look and take a reflective moment in the busy space. I will certainly look out for others. It’s such a simple and moving idea.

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at how artists in Britain, France and Germany processed the physical and emotional effects of the First World War. If you follow my blog you know I am a bit of a First World War geek and I’m particularly interested in the after effects on art, literature and culture so this was a dream of a show for me. The show was arranged on the broad themes of Remembrance, traces of war, return to order and imagining post-war society. As soon as you entered you were thrown into the art of the battlefield leading into work inspired by the ruins and graveyards. It included a run of three pictures from each country using the abandoned helmet as a symbol of the death of a single soldier. These were shown with three real helmets. I loved a stunning Nevinson of Ypres after the first bombardment with cubist roofs at different angles. It was also nice to see trench art included here.   There was a super room on war memorials which features the galle...

Nice small display at the National Portrait Gallery looking at some of the Victoria Cross holders from the First World War.   The Victoria Cross is the highest military honour and was awarded 628 times in the First World War. Patriotic interest in those who had been awarded them was fuelled by postcards and cigarette cards. Only three people have been awarded two VCs and two were non-combatant doctors, Arthur Martin Leake who died in 1953 and Noel Godfrey Chavasse who was killed in action. It was poignant to realise that a lot of the pictures were the lovely hopeful studio pictures taken of soldiers before they went to war. Two characters caught my eye. Albert Ball, the first pilot to become a popular hero, and he is shown in a flash car in a postcard which was shown with the model of his statue in Nottingham. I also liked Sir Adrian Carter who served in the Boer War and the First and Second World Wars, losing an eye and a hand. Again it was nice that as well as ph...

Lovely trip to the archives of the National Portrait Gallery to look the material they have on the gallery during the First World War organised for friends of the gallery. This event was made by the wonderful story telling of the lady who showed us around. I am so sorry I didn’t get her name. She’d picked fascinating documents from the archive then wove them together to tell us a story and paint a picture of some fascinating characters. She looked at the two directors of the gallery during the period but more interesting were the glimpses into the lives of the guards who became special constables for the duration of the war. You always think of war as a time of great events and grand behaviour but she included wonderful tales of catching a petty thief and of arguments between the guards and the typists of the government department that moved in. She was also good at answering questions and had researched what happened to the characters that she was talking about. The event...

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  

Small display at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the poets of the First World War. The display was split in two, poets on active service and poets at home. The focus in the first section was on the poets who died, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas. I was interested to see the label which said that Rosenberg signed up for reasons of poverty not patriotism. The home section of the display looked at the soldier poets who survived and good use was made, again, of the photograph albums of Ottoline Morrell with pictures of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden at Garsington. I was pleased to see Vera Brittain included as she had served with the VAD. Closes on 1 October 2017  

Fascinating exhibition at the Estorick Collection   looking at the artists and photographers who recorded the role of the British forces in Italy in the First World War. I was so excited to discover that the main artist featured was Sydney Carline. As well as being a good artist in his own right he was also Stanley Spencer’s brother in law and I have drawing by him. Carline was in the Royal Flying Corps and many of the works here were pictures of air battles or views from planes. These pictures were full of action and gave a wonderful sense of the speed and height of flying by showing the ground below as slightly out of focus. I particularly loved some closely observed sketches of in the local villages. The second room looked at two photographers, Ernest Brooks and William Joseph Brunell, who recorded the same campaign. The pictures were not only of the front and the solders but also the people of Italy who were helping them. There were wonderful studies of women loadi...