Cathy's Art Diary

Fun exhibition at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art of work by Cosima von Bonin. The beach and sea were a recurring theme in this show where sea creatures take on human characteristics and perform human acts! Who can resist a huge stuffed crab on a deckchair? The show used the large ground floor space of the gallery well with the scale of the work matching the scale of the room. The one installation with sound had a really great speaker with good quality sound but it didn’t dominate the gallery. I loved a shark at a desk, two clams in shells with eyes and huge octopus with gold tipped legs. The whole thing was such fun even though I’m not sure what it all meant. Closes on 7 August 2016  

Interesting exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art of new work by Tessa Lynch. The commentary said that the work mimics the objects and scenarios we see on our daily commutes. I loved the two Perched works which wrapped a brick patterned webbing round a steel frame giving the impression of brick ledge. The main piece was a long low table in shades of pink. I liked it but I wasn’t too sure what it was about. I liked some pieces which seemed to be proposals for public sculptures but wasn’t sure if they were just art works in their own right or if there were plans to make them. I do hope there are real plans they’d look great on a large scale in a public space. Closed on 19 June 2016  

Beautiful exhibition of photographs at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art by Wolfgang Tillmans. The pictures looked at their subjects from strange angles and he described them as “collapsing the known into the unknown”. I loved a picture of a giant mechanical claw picking up rubbish. There were specks of colour in the grey rubbish and a softness to its broken down texture, an ugly thing became something lovely. Other subjects included a gutter in Buenos Aires, the pattern of workers accommodation in China, fungus spores and a lupin against clocks. Closes on 7 August 2016  

Fascinating exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art of new work by Jacqueline Donachie. A lot of the work was based on research with a group of women affected by the inherited genetic condition, Myotonic Dystrophy. The best piece was a video installation showing women with the condition on a split screen with their sisters talking about their lives and how it has affected both of them. There was a poignancy to think of the lottery that from the same set of genes one sister had the condition and the other didn’t and the effect that had on both of them. I wasn’t too sure about some of the sculptures but I did like the orange scaffolding poles which disrupted the space. Closes on 13 November 2016  

Spotlight display at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow looking a portrait of David Samson by Joan Eardley and other pictures she painted of his family and the area in which he lived. She captures a community in the 1950s at the point at which it is going to disappear with tower block replacing the tenements. The picture of David shows him in a grey coat which is much too big for him and held together by a belt. I loved “Girl with Baby in Blue” which showed the real tenderness between a child and the brother or sister she was looking after.

Small exhibition looking at a recently acquired small picture “Hagar and the Angel” by John Runciman at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow. This picture, done in 1766, was an early example of a Scottish religious work and was shown alongside etchings by John and his brother Alexander and of the subject of Abraham, Hagar and Sarah by other artists. It also followed the brothers through to a trip to Italy where John died but Alexander continued to work and became a leading Scottish artist on his return. A lovely example of an exhibition that puts a picture in context.

Quirky exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow looking at the first guide to the Hunterian Museum by Captain John Laskey in 1813. It took the opportunity to display objects from the original collection alongside their descriptions from the catalogue. In doing so it gave a snapshot of the world as understood by the Enlightenment and gave a wonderful view of what one of the oldest public museums in the world was like in its early days. It included objects from Captain Cook, a very dead three toed sloth, anatomical items and a copy of the Rosetta stone. It was interesting to see mistakes which were made at the time such as a shield which was identified as Roman but in fact had been made in the Renaissance for Ludivico Sfzora.

Interesting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow of contemporary Scottish sculpture bringing together works by 6 Glasgow based artists. It worked well in the very elegant main gallery of the Museum with the colour of many of the works mirroring the colour of the gallery. I liked the white objects on white table which looked very tactile but I resisted! Also the blackboard with giant piece of chalk coming out of it.    

Small exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Glasgow part of a series highlighting recent purchases of international art hanging them alongside items from the UK to show shared influences. This exhibition looks at playful approaches to object making such as David Hockney’s photograph of real sunflowers next to a drawing of sunflowers. I must admit there were more UK works than international so I felt the exhibition slightly missed the point.

Interesting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow of work by this sculptor who made the Stravinsky Fountain at the Pompidou Centre. Eric and Jean Cass had donated 14 works by Nikki de Saint Phalle to the museum following a recent decision to disperse their collection to museums in the UK. They gave these works as the museum already had works by the artist. On the surface these were very jolly coloured sculptures although from reading the labels I realised they were inspired by abuse.   I liked a rather depressed little patchwork frog! A centrepiece was ”Altar of a Dead Cat” a triptych like house door with religious objects and dead animals attached as well as cans of compressed paint which she had then shot at to burst over the objects. It was really rather sinister but impressive. There was an interesting film with it about its conservation.