Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Centre for British Photography of work by Jo Spence. Curated by Patrizia Di Bello from the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive at Birkbeck, University of London and James Hyman, Centre for British Photography the show takes as its starting point Jo Spence's thesis "Fairytales and Photography. Or, Another Look at Cinderella" (1982), which she wrote while a mature student on a photography course. My favourite pieces were from a series called "Only When I Got to Fifty Did I Realise I Was Cinderella" which explored facing middle age and health issues. These consisted of self-portrait mounted on card and surrounded by a handwritten thought or statement. Closes 23 April 2023

Worthy exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at the response of two contemporary artists to chronic illness. The show looked at how illness disrupts how we think of our bodies but I found that because it just looked at two experiences it felt more like you were looking at the artists’ therapy than considering the issue in more general terms. The photographer Jo Spence documented her breast cancer diagnosis. I did like her project “Beyond the Family Album” which looked at the things we miss out of photo albums as we usually only record the happy and successful moments in life. In hers she adds illness, divorce and tension. Oreet Ashery offered an impenetrable series of videos looking at dying in the virtual world. Each one seemed to be over 30 minutes long and in the short time I gave one of them I really didn’t understand what I was looking at. I wasn’t sure how the tent structure and teddy bear bean bags fit in except that you needed some comfort to watch them...