Cathy's Art Diary

Stunning new statue in Parliament Square of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett. The statue was designed by the contemporary artist Gillian Wearing and I was a bit worried that it would be a bit alternative but in fact it’s a wonderful, classic figure. I loved the detail on it even down to the pattern of her tweed coat being defined in the bronze and the wonderful way her shoes peep out from under her skirt. I also liked the touch of including photographs of named suffragettes etched on marble plaques round the base. I was interested to see that it was a suffragist rather than a more militant suffragette that made into into Parliament Square, however Emeline Pankhurst isn’t far away in Victoria Tower Gardens, so it actually strikes a nice balance of representing all aspects of the fight for votes from women. Review Telegraph

Strange but compelling exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of curated by contemporary artist, Gillian Wearing, to showcase the work of early 20th century artist Claude Cahun and her own response to it. The wonderful discovery for me was the work of Cahun who was born Lucy Schwab and fell in love at school in England with Suzanne Malherbe, later called Marcel Moore when they both took gender neutral names. Cahun specialised in staging photographs of herself which not taken for display but as an ongoing dialogue with herself. I was fascinated by their years in occupied Jersey during the war where they wrote propaganda leaflets until they were arrested and sentence to death. I loved the photos of Cahun dancing on a wall on the Liberation of Jersey. Cahun used masks in a number of her photographs as well as staging scenarios to take pictures of. Wearing highlighted her own work which does this. It was interesting to see a series of the masks she had used and see how th...

Wonderful video installation at the University of Brighton as part of the Brighton Festival by Gillian Wearing. The video was a collaborative film using short clips of people sent to her by people all over the world of their curtains or blinds opening in the morning to reveal the view from their window. As part of its display in Brighton she had invited Brighton and Hove residents to take part. You know I can often be rude about videos in art galleries but I loved this one. It gave a wonderful view of landscapes from around the world and had a uniting effect as opening our curtains, or in my case blind, in the morning is one of the first things we do and we all do it. Because the clips were so short you sat mesmerised to just see one more, then just another one. When Brighton scenes came on there was some pointing and smiling from the audience. I wish I’d had longer to watch more of this and I don’t often say that about video art! Closed 29 May 2016