Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Houses of Parliament looking at the role of women in Parliament.   It’s arranged chronologically but cleverly focuses it around four spaces used by women over the years, recreating them and discussing the history of that era. It started with the Ventilator in the attic from which women viewed the actions in the house from 1818 to 1834. The picture attached is by 15 year old Georgina Chatteron of her view of how the women might have looked. This was the age of the Great Reform Act which expended voting rights to more men but no women.   Next was the Cage was the purpose built ladies gallery in the new Palace of Westminster which again was high up and had metal grilles over the windows. This section was used to discuss the suffrage and suffragette movements. It was moving to see prison and force feeding medals and the sign that Tony Benn had put on the broom cupboard where Emily Davidson spent the night of a census so she could list herse...

Wonderful installation at Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament, by artist, architect and conservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos and commissioned by Artangel. The piece was a 50m long latex cast of the interior wall of this medieval hall embedded with hundreds of years of surface dirt and pollution. The sheet is an art work but was also used as part of the process of cleaning the wall. It is hung alongside the wall about 8 feet away from it creating a corridor. You can stand by it and directly compare the dirt which has come off with the wall behind. The work is like a big peel off face mask! The title comes from a quote from John Ruskin. I’d like to know if there is to be any analysis of the dirt as, as the commentary pointed out, it included the dust of the Fire of London and the Blitz. This was an fantastic piece of work but also a treat to go and see this amazing medieval space in the middle of the Houses of Parliament. Closes on 1 September 2016. Review ...

Small display at the National Portrait Gallery looking at the Fine Arts Commission which was set up to oversee the interior design of the new Houses of Parliament in 1841. I was interested in the idea of setting up a national school of history painting favouring frescos as I love the Italian Renaissance frescos. I was amused that Price Albert commissioned frescos for his summer houses so the artists could practice techniques. However I learnt far more from the commentary than the pictures which were just pictures of those involved. It was also hard to find the main group portrait it kept referring to as it was in another room. Why not move it to the display for a short period?