Cathy's Art Diary

Grand exhibition at the Halycon Gallery of new work by Mitch Griffiths. Griffiths paints contemporary themes but in a highly finished Old Master style. They dominate the space but also pull you in to look at the fine detail and to lead you to wonder at their almost photographic finish. I find the subject matter a bit overblown for my tastes but would like to see them hung with older pictures to compare the technique and examine the contemporary themes treated in a mythical way alongside previous artists that have employed that style. Closes 31 May 2022  

Interesting exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of new figurative work by Bob Dylan. These works were based on film stills and the title comes from the cinematic technique tells a story through the foreground, middle, and background, rather than focussing on one visual plane over another. They were cropped like film in enhanced colours reminding me of movies of the 1950s. I liked the paintings and they inevitably reminded me of Hopper and 1930s/40s American documentary photography but I guess that is because those influenced the cinema of the time. It like the work was coming full circle from art, through cinema and back to art. Closes 21 January 2021

Thoughtful exhibition at Halcyon Gallery looking at how three artists use national and political figures and imagery to look at identity. The show included a classic set of Andy Warhol’s Chairman Mao screen prints which fascinatingly reproduces an image in different colourways so it ceases to have its original meaning and an impact. These were shown alongside some powerful portraits of individuals wrapped in flags by Mitch Griffiths, from a soldier in conflict to a vulnerable young woman in an American flag. The works are so highly finished and realistic I had to check online that they were paintings not photographs. However my favourites were Dominic Harris’s digital butterfly works. In the one shown here butterflies make up the American flag but if you touch the surface they break free and fly around the image. In another they fly away and return in a different colour. Larger individual works hung together react to sound and fly away if you clap or shout. Thank you to the securi...

Magical exhibition at the Halycon Gallery of video presentations by Dominic Harris. It’s hard to find an overarching label to describe this show. It was digital works presented like paintings or nature studies. The commentary called them a “surreal and whimsical take on reality set in the context of art history”.   Flowers, birds and butterflies looked still but as you walked past them they moved in interaction with you. With the sunflower shown here its petals moved gently in a breeze and in a representation of butterflies mounted in a case, one by one they flapped their wings. My favourite were four pictures referencing Dutch flower pictures which gradually got more modern and minimal until the last was just falling petals. The gallery assistant showed me how, if you moved your hand across them, you could move the flowers or they retreated into buds if you touched them. I could have played with it for hours! I wasn’t so taken with the Disney works. Harris is one ...

Lovely exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of new work by the sculptor Lorenzo Quinn. I discovered Quinn’s work in this gallery a few years ago and fell in love with it so it’s always nice to see new pieces. They always have such a wonderful sense of balance such as the piece shown of a man in the lotus position balanced on just two fingers of upturned hands. I loved “Force of Nature II” of a body covered in beautiful drapery which is hollow when you look at the end of it. The body pulls back a globe and the whole thing has such tension. There were some new pieces in the Quinn tradition of hands or figures within circles. I want to push them to see if they’d rock. Quinn has produced a bridge of six giant hands for the Venice Biennale which I’d love to see and a new work empowerment was billed that it “will play a vital role in promoting the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Foundation”. Watch this space! Closes 30 June 2019

Beautiful exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of new work by Dale Chihuly, the glass artist. I love this artists work having first discovered him via his wonderful chandelier at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The centre of this show was a display of sculpture by him in bright colours. He layers the coloured glass with white layers so that the colours remain crisp. They are like big waterlilies. Around the edge was a new idea from him where he paints on both side of acrylic which he then lights from behind. The commentary said these were inspired by stained glass windows and they have the effect of projecting colour into the room. It was interesting to see one of the gallery assistants turning the light on and off behind one so that you could see the different the light made.

Colouful exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of print series by Andy Warhol. The show looked at how Warhol understood mass imagery and included good commentaries on the series shown. Some of the sets remove the uniqueness of a work but others give deeper insight to the original subject. I liked the set of prints of Ingrid Bergman which were commissioned by a gallery when she died. Rather than using repetition Warhol chose four different pictures of her   three from films and one of her as herself. I liked the way he layers the screen-print, his own drawing and blocks of colour. I was also fascinated by the prints which incorporated diamond dust such as the Superman print where the dust was used as an outline of the superhero next to the main screenprint. My favourite set was the four based on Ucello’s St George and the Dragon as it’s a picture I love and it was interesting to see how the detail he chooses work in different colours and textures. Closed on 16 Febru...

Interesting exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of new work by Ernesto Canovas.   The work explores the theme of fake news taking apparently straightforward images but which are questioned and given new meaning. I must admit I didn’t really get this show! I admit I was tired having done 16 small exhibitions that day and I needed the last one to be straightforward and hit me between the eyes and this didn’t. I think it needed more concentration and thought that I was prepared to give it. I did however like the newspaper format hand out which went with it. The images were large film or newspaper images on wood with blocks of colour added. They remind us that images can be manipulated and to question what we see. However they weren’t beautiful objects and probably needed to be seen together to get the message. Closed on 10 June 2018

Fun exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery looking at the early illustration work of Andy Warhol.   I hadn’t realised that when Warhol moved to New York he began by working as an illustrator for fashion brands and he became one of the city’s most successful commercial artists. I’d also not know that he lived with his mother and 25 cats all but one called Sam!   I loved a wall of shoe pictures called “A La Recherche du Shoe Perdu” from when he worked for a shoe manufacture, with the captions transcribed by his mother. The colour was added to the prints at painting parties which he held.   There was also a copy of his first book “Wild Raspberries” a satirical cook book with tongue in cheek recipes such as Baked Hawaii and a set of lithographs from 1953 of star crossed lovers.   Closed 10 June 2018  

Colourful exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of graphics, portfolios and original works on paper and canvas by Andy Warhol. These works spanned Warhol’s career from a picture of a shoe from 1955 which I quite liked through to some series of works from the 1980s. The later works were big bold series of works. I rather liked the “Cowboys and Indian” series off figures from the Wild West and the upstairs room was dedicated to the 1982 series of 10 prints called “Endangered Species”. My favourite pieces were a series of takes on the Ucello picture of St George and the Dragon as it was interesting to see Warhol tackle an art historic subject. By varying the colours it made you look more closely at the composition. Closes on 4 March 2017

Lovely exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of new work by the sculptor Lorenzo Quinn. I love Quinn’s work but I found it was getting a slightly saccharine and sentimental. I would rather have been left to think about them myself and didn’t need the quotes from the artist to labour the message. I still like his wonderful smooth figures and his use of balance in the work. I also like the high shine and finish to the work. I like his hands set in circles which rock and it was a nice touch that the gallery attendants were quietly setting some of them rocking as you walked round. I loved a work called “Balancing our Worlds” of two people pulling against each other in harmony, yes I know that sounds like a contradiction! My favourite piece was “Reach” of a naked couple with a ladder at an acute angel with the man supporting it at the bottom and the woman at the top reaching out into the unknown. Such a beautifully balanced piece with the ladder at just eh right angel and a se...

Atmospheric exhibition at Halcyon Gallery of new work by Ernesto Cánovas. The large pictures on wood panels split into sections consisted of found images and plain coloured panels. I liked the fact the wood grain showed though the images giving a real sense of them as made objects. They made me think of Hopper as they had a nostalgic feel to them. Closed on 13 March 2016

Luminous exhibition at the Halycon Gallery of paintings on glass by Dale Chihuly. These were beautiful back lit works on glass which mainly consisted of swirled circles of paint with Pollock like drops of paint inside the circles and escaping from them. I loved the fact that you could see the brush stokes when you were close to them. They reminded me of medieval painted stained glass. They were shown with a few of Chihuly’s glass sculptures which are always stunning.

Peaceful exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of work by Ernesto Cánovas evoking Turner. I am enjoying the whole Turner thing at the moment and most interesting have been shows like this where contemporary artists are responding to the work. The commentary said these works were based on visits to the National Gallery and concentrated on small sections of colour. These pictures explored the colour and texture of Turner and consisted of mixed media and resin on wood. I loved the fact that the pattern of the wood showed through when you got close to the work adding another layer. I liked the ones which had Turner like small traces of red, blobs or thin lies, which drew the eye into the picture. Very varnishing day!

Clever exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of a new work by Santiago Montoya. The main work was a structure made of regular sticks called tally sticks to give the idea of an identical match and also of accountancy sticks from the middle ages scored and split to record what one party owed. These were made into a tower block like structure by tying them together with paper currency. The idea (according to the commentary) was to address the sustainably of society and fragility of the financial structure of the world. And actually for once I could have worked this out and it worked well as an idea. The structure must have been stable but it looked as if a small push would send in crashing down. I loved the idea of old money and modern money combined. It was shown with his collages made of paper currency which I had seen before and “Forgive me father for I have painted”, which again I have seen before and it consists of artists materials set in Perspex. It was nice to see th...

Exhibition of work by Santiago Montoya at Halcyon Gallery as part of their Halcyon New Contemporaries series. The show comprised a selection of types of works. Some were large tapestries which shows pictures and symbols from banknotes which plays on the idea that tapestries used to denote wealth as they were both expensive and portable. I also liked the pictures made of bank notes, rolled over and used to create patterns such as a $ sign in red on blue. My favourite bit was in the installation in the middle of the room called “Forgive me Father for I have painted” which set paint brushes and paint tubes in resin as a comment on the contemporary art world’s relationship to painting.

Stunning exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of glass by Dale Chihuly. There was an interesting mix of work including pieces which were almost architectural installations of blown glass such as the central piece with a sea bed of glass shapes above your head. I loved the glass water lily shapes mounted on the wall an beautifully lit to thrown the colours against the wall. There were also smaller sculptures which you could imagine having in a home, often shell like in shape and examples of chandeliers like the one at the V&A, cascading from the ceiling and throwing off different shapes alight. A visually stunning show and a privilege to be so close to such lovely fragile work. Review Telegraph  

Interesting exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of work by Bob Dylan with an emphasis on his metalwork. I loved his gates made of bits and pieces of iron work such as cogs, pullies and tools within a gate shape. I particularly like one with a mincer on it and a spanner to hold it closed.   In the description he says that gates can shut you in or shut you out and describes seeing iron work all around his as her grew up, seeing “The kinds of images which tattoo themselves onto am impressionable mind”. The exhibition also included others sets of work such as his Drawn Blank series of paintings of life on the road giving a glimpse into a private world. Downstairs were his series Revisionist Art with mocked up magazine covers and Gangster Doors, shot up car doors with posters of 1930s gangsters. I found the iron work the most interesting pieces and certainly preferred them to the portraits shown at the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year. Reviews Telegrap...

Useful exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery looking at the role prints have played in art from the etchings of Durer and Rembrandt to works by modern artists. Although this was a selling exhibition it went out of its way to also offer an overview of the subject with excellent commentaries on the works and two walls giving definitions of the terms used in print making. It showed how artists increasingly saw print making as an art form in its own right. There were sections on the Old Masters, Impressionist and modern European, British and American works. I had not known that Pissaro worked quite extensively in prints and in fact saw his prints quoted in another exhibition later in the week. I loved the Matisse prints particularly a lovely simply drawn face called “Grande Visage”. But most surprising to me were the Warhol prints. I confess I don’t usually like Warhol but I loved two prints of grapes and a set of prints of shoes.

Stunning exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of sculpture by Lorenzo Quinn. These were wonderful works by the son of Anthony Quinn who has done work for the United Nations. In fact I’m not really sure where to start! I found the pieces very peaceful and all gave a positive view of love and relationships. The modern Atlas, a life sized male nude doing a handstand and balancing the world on his feet rather than his shoulders, was amazing. The matching globes revolving in the window with male and female figures in them called “Each in their own world”. Downstairs were some lovely chess sets with large versions of the pieces all of which were hands so for example the tower was a clenched fist. Also variations on a theme entitled Gravity of one figure supporting another figure hanging from them hands. All wonderful!