Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Hayward Gallery as a retrospective of the artist Linder. I’d come across Linder’s work before and like what they have to say but hadn’t realised they had been on the art scene since the 1970s and designed a single cover for the Buzzcocks. I did find en masse that the work became a bit repetitive. The photo collage works were nicely broken up by installations in each room but I quickly got the message of the show. It’s a good example of how powerful one work by an artist can be in a show but it can become diluted when shown together. Closed 5 May 2025 Reviews Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Joyous exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Mickalene Thomas. The show presented large, glittery paintings and collages of women embellished with crystals. Some were in installations representing rooms the artist had lived in. These big, bright works were celebratory and couldn’t help but make you feel happy. That said, I have to give a shout out to a kind gallery guide who rescued me when I had a dizzy spell half way round. She bought me a Diet Coke and arranged a ticket for a revisit. Hence, I did the show in two sittings.   I want one of the patchwork bucket chairs used in the show! Closed 5 May 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Touching exhibition at the Hayward Gallery by Taiwanese artist Huang Po-Chih. The show explores the personal stories of people involved in the globalised textile industry in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan via a series of photographs and a video. The video and its accompanying installation dominated the room. A frame was hung with shirts and the video showed a group of men putting on a great pile of shirts until they were wearing 20 or more. Around this were photographs of workers with quotes by them about the effects of the work. The other side of the room showed a banner made to protest the relocation of the Pang Jai textile market.   Closed 5 January 2025  

Strange exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Korean artist Haegue Yang from the last 30 years of her career. The work consisted of sculptures and installations made of everyday objects. At first I just thought it looked messy but as I spent time with it it became quite meditative. I loved a large room of objects which could move, set   in a blue room where the paint colour was part of the installation chosen by staff from the exhibiting institution and sourced from local suppliers for each showing of the pieces. It was a shame the pieces weren’t being moved although a noticed said on a few days of the show they will be. I loved a large installation made of Venetian blinds with a concerto and light show playing around it. It really and you slow down and think. I also liked the recreation to her fist solo exhibition in Korea, “Recollection of Sadong 30”, which was set on her grandparents abandoned home. I loved the inclusion of a scent diffuser to give the added dime...

Strange video installation at the Hayward Gallery by Naomi Rincon Gallardo. I’m afraid this might have suffered from being one show too many in a day and from its sister show of work by Tavares Strachan being so good. The video followed children dressed as animals as they chased deities across Mexico, I think. The commentary says it reflects the artists belief that planetary collapse is imminent. It was shown with some of the masks that the children were wearing. I’m afraid I just wasn’t in the mood to engage with this colourful but confusing piece however I did notice a little girl who had settled on a bean bag and seemed enthralled or possible stunned! Closed 1 September 2024      

Fabulous exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Tavares Strachan over the last two decades. Strachan’s work poses questions about who is seen and unseen and tries to rediscover forgotten black figures in history. He does this in a beautiful and layered way producing exquisite objects as well as making you look at history in a different way. I loved his ceramic pieces combining transitional shaped pots with the faces of historical figures in some instances combining two by splitting the older head to show a more contemporary one underneath such as this one of the Roman emperor Septimus Severus and Steve Biko. There were some interesting pieces around Matthew Henson who was possibly the first man to reach the North Pole and Robert Henry Lawrence Jnr, a black trainee astronaut who died while training. In both cases Strachan replicated their experiences visiting the North Pole and undertaking cosmonaut training. My favourite pieces were the giant heads particularly this one ...

Beautiful exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of contemporary sculpture which is inspired by movement, fluidity and growth in nature. There were 21 artists in this show and from the first work by a group called Drift which had amoeba like light shades elegantly dancing from the ceiling I was hooked. I was surprised how much if the work I recognised from going round the private galleries such as Marguerite Humeau’s sculpture like a huge fungi of beeswax and Ruth Asawa’s basket like hangings. I loved Michel Blazy’s “Bouquet Final” which created bubbles from a scaffold which gently grew and waved in the draught and the colours of Jean-Luc Moulene’s glass work. Oh and now about a neon rollercoaster? Closes 6 May 2024 Reviews Times Guardian  

Sublime exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. I say sublime as a lot of the work had that awe inspiring quality of sublime landscapes particularly the seascapes. Some of the pieces also had an eerie quality like the portraits of wax works from Madame Tussaud’s which looked real. I loved the idea of layers of history in them from the original subject, the wax work, the photograph and us the viewer. I loved the first baffling series which appeared to be perfectly posed wildlife shots although the one of an early man and women messed with your mind. You then realised they were dioramas from the Museum of Natural History in New York.   I also liked the pictures of interiors of cinemas and theatres. Sugimoto had taken them on a timed exposure the same length as a feature film that was shown. This resulted in the screen in the centre being an intense light. I found myself slowing down I look at them in detail and being drawn into that centr...

Beautiful and thoughtful exhibition at the Hayward Gallery by Amol K Patil. Patil works in Mumbai and Amsterdam and in this installation he explores the current situation of workers and casteism as well as the relationship between the body and the urban environment. Hands and feet represent the tools of labour and small-sculptures were displayed on stands mimicking the office furniture of colonial administration. They are shown with delicate drawings and objects from his family archive.   I loved these beautiful works with small hands and feet emerging from them. They made a point but subtlety and were lovely objects in their own right. My favourite was this line up of tiny figures, each about 4 cm high and the group stretching for over a metre which reminded me of the little plastic figures you got as a child which you had to separate from each other and their molding. Closed 19 November 2023  

Mixed exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by 15 contemporary artists rethinking our response to environmental issues. I say mixed as there were some lovely works but there were also some pieces which didn’t seem to fit the theme. My favourite was a new version of Agnes Denes’s “The Living Pyramid”, a structure planted up and dominating the room. I also liked Ackroyd and Harvey’s photographic photosynthesis portraits of environmental activists created with grass seed which developed in different shades of green depending how much light fell on it. A big shout out to Cornelia Parker’s video of children talking about the environment especially to a girl who dealt brilliantly with a boy mansplaining! Closed 3 September 2023 Reviews Times Evening Standard    

Impressive installation/pavilion outside the Hayward Gallery by Asim Waqif. The piece consists of poles and strips of bamboo woven together and supported by steel. Evidently the piece was improvised over 10 days. It is billed as a place of contemplation but that is a bit hard when it also has sticks with which to hit the poles to use them as musical instruments. I love the contrast of the natural materials against the brutalist concrete of the gallery and the way it entices you to walk through. This is the third annual commission presented in partnership with the Bagri Foundation to bring new public artworks by artists from or inspired by Asia and its diaspora to the Southbank Centre. Closes 22 October 2023  

Striking image outside the Hayward Gallery by Egyptian artist, Souad Abdelrassoul. The piece looks great in the space being a beautiful shade of blue. It’s a nice touch that it shows the Nile and is displayed so close to the Thames. Evidently her work uses depictions of the natural world to reflect on her experience as a woman who is constrained by the conservative society she lives in. This is the latest in a series of large murals in this space which are always worth seeing. Closes 12 December 2023    

Wonderful exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of contemporary art using ceramics. It was all shown quite sparsely with few barriers so you really interacted with the work. The pieces either seemed to be bright and colourful or white and serene and they worked well together. Of course there was obvious people like Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal and I was pleased to recognise Rachel Kneebone too. Shout outs go to Emma Hart’s abstract pictures in ceramic set into windscreen shaped frames and Klara Kristalova’s installation of 18 fairy/mythical figures in a landscape of vegetation which gave off a beautiful smell.   I think my favourite was five life sized scenes from a house taken over by bugs and mice by Lindsay Mendick. I should have found it horrific but I loved it. The show with lots of artists to look out for in the future and an reactivated love of ceramics. Closes 8 January 2023 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Underwhelming installation from the Hayward Gallery outside the Royal Festival Hall by Monira Al Qadiri. The description says it “reanimates the ancient sea creatures that form today’s fossil fuels” but I wasn’t convinced. It was a series of flat tubes of fossil creatures in an iridescent finished. It was quite hard to see what they were. It does say that it is animated by light so I will try to go back and see it in other conditions but when I went it felt quite static. It was also described as towering which is stretching it a bit. It actually felt   dwarfed and hidden by the nearby stage. Closes 6 November 2022    

Interesting  pavilion at the Hayward Gallery by Jyll Bradley. This work is colourful and uses bright colours which look great against the concrete of the South Bank. I liked the link to Londoners going to Kent as Hop pickers and the shape is meant to be like hop vines. I’m not sure I would have got the link to hop picking without the explanation and that’s a shame as it is an interesting emotive one and the reason for the piece, I loved the way the colour of the sky changes as you walk through. I’ve seen it against since in different lights and from different angles and it is effective. However if you want people to sit in it, picnic etc as the introduction suggests, it would be good to have seats inside. It does feel like a lean to on a concrete structure and is not inviting to stop within it. Closes 2 October 2022

Interesting exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Louise Bourgeois using clothes from all stages of her life. This was a moving show as it featured pieces from the last 20 years of Bourgeois’s life using clothes which she had saved. In doing this the work felt like it was the story of her whole life experience.  I knew her work featuring large spiders, and there were a couple of works which incorporated these, but I didn’t know a lot about her other work and found it very tender. Her mother had been a tapestry restorer and I found the pieces using textiles saved from her particularly beautiful. The work looked beautiful in the open, brutalist space and were well set out so they spoke to each other. Closes 15 May 2022 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Fun installation outside the Hayward Gallery of two fountains by Klaus Weber. There are two torsos standing the space, one headless and the other just legs. From each there are spurts of water and at regular intervals the legs one shuts down and instead a cascade of water falls from the walkway above. I love the way you come across these as you walk to the gallery, through to the National Theatre or back to the Festival Hall and they disrupt the familiar space. Closes 9 September 2022      

Fun installation outside the Hayward Gallery of a art work by Salman Toor. It shows a group of people making and listening to music and is a welcome blast of colour against the concrete. It is a great lock down choice for the galleries latest Billboard project celebrating, as the blurb says “the freedom, empathy and joy of being physically together to witness art.” Being in a public space it is great to see it with people around it, almost extending the scene into the space. Closes May 2022  

Dull exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of drawings by Gerhard Richter. As you know I sometimes struggle with abstract art and somehow abstract drawings feel even more difficult as they lack expressive colour. I think the show also suffered from having just done the colourful, mainly naturalist works in the Mixing it Up show in the main gallery. The show consisted of 6 sets of drawings show in each case in a line across one wall. The earliest from 2002 painted blocks of black lacquer on photographs and the most recent from earlier this year using graphite on paper. Closes 12 December 2021  

Bright exhibition at Hayward Gallery of painting by 31 contemporary artists.  When I entered this show I was struck by the wonderful colours. Things got more sludge like upstairs but the first impression was a welcome blast of brightness and light. As with any show of this number of artists there were hits and misses but all of the work gave you something to think about and reassured me that there is still good painting about.  Highlights included Lisa Brice’s large picture of an artists studio shown here completely populated by women. Her work focuses on the role of women in contemporary and historic art and I always love it. Also show here is Kadzanai-Voilet Hwami’s “Bira”, a beautifully finished work.  I also liked Jonathon Wateridge’s stunningly realistic works based on improvises scenarios in his studio and Caroline Coon’s quirky football pictures and Louise Giovanelli’s amazing pictures of shiny surfaces such as a set of green satin curtains.  Closes 12 Decemb...