Cathy's Art Diary

Charming exhibition at Foyles on Charing Cross Road of illustrations by Tom de Freston. The show featured work from two books "Julia and the Shark" and "Leila and the Blue Fox", both by his wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave, with a mix of prints and original work shown in a nicely designed space with his characters cropping up between the exhibits and around the walls. There were good explanations of his working methods. Each finished image is a collage using various techniques to build depth. I loved the finished product particularly the more abstract pieces like the one shown here which had layers of paint over a map. I also liked his sweet small drawings of the animals and people in the stories. Closes 27 November 2023

Interesting exhibition at Foyles bookshop of photographs by Oliver Wainwright, the architect and design critic.   The pictures focus on Pyongyang city which was destroyed by bombing in the Korean War and rebuilt from scratch. They include pictures of the mosaics in the underground which Wainwright describes as a “socialist fairyland and lots of neat, pared back rather 1950s interiors.   My favourite was, of course, the central library or as they called it the “Grand People’s Study House”! I was looking for a new name for my service!   Closed on 21 August 2018

Interesting exhibition at Foyles’ Bookshop on Charing Cross Road curated by curated by Futurecity in partnership with Price & Myers’ Geometrics looking at how the design process is changing with the growth in digitized/computerized deign. The commentaries were a bit long and wordy. There were some interesting exhibits but I was not always clear from the commentaries whether they were just designs or had been made. I think a show which would be fascinating for designers but is a bit confusing to some of the rest of us, well me! I did however love the arch of chairs which and been made for a housing development in Wycombe. The chairs were made, and the arch was put together by volunteers and when it was taken down the chairs were given back to them. What a lovely thing to have been involved in. I also liked Slip Stream which had been designed for Heathrow. It’s a huge sculpture based on the movement of planes. I hadn’t heard about it and now I can’t wait to see it. ...

Installation on the top floor of Foyles bookshop by Mark Titchner. This was a very bold wall decorated in geometric designs in a reflective material with big white letters. According to the blurb there was a link to William Blake, who was born nearby, but I couldn’t work out what the link was. The shame was that the work didn’t really fit the space. It was blocked on both sides by big white pillars so there was nowhere you could look at it from with seeing a pillar. I wonder if anyone looked at the space before making it or was this an artistic statement I didn’t get?