Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Docklands looking at the rituals around death and burial in Roman London. The displays round the edge looked in general at the rituals while in the centre twenty seven skeletons and cremated remains highlighted the points already raised. The remains were shown with their grave goods and it was fascinating to read that you find less gave goods in London than other parts of the empire as the population was quite transitory. Sounds a bit like now too. The research work done on the remains was fascinating. Most of the people showed signs of malnourishment despite the probably expense their funerals. It easy to be pulled in to viewing the bodies purely as museum exhibitions and sobering to stop and think of them as real people who lived in the same city as me. I found the show very moving. The star of the show was a sarcophagus discovered in Southwark in 2017. There was a super video with it showing its discovery, how it was opened an...

Delightful exhibition at the Museum of Docklands of photographs by Christina Broom who has been described as the first female press photographer. Christina set up as a photographer when her husband was badly injured in a cricket accident. They had run a stationary shop and realised that postcards sold well so she set out to produce her own. The show was split into sections on different themes of her work. The first I looked at was on suffragettes. She had worked at many of the big rallies taking pictures in the crowd and doing portrait shots. This built into a wonderful insight into the types of women involved and was a lovely reminder of some of the more peaceful aspects of the campaign such a cake stalls! The next section looked at his work with the army and in particular of life on the home front for soldiers during the First World War. Again there were lots of portraits and you couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to all the men shown. She never had a studio...

Slightly muddled exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands looking at the significance of bridges in the London landscape. I’ve had to get that that description off the museum’s website as I wasn’t quite sure what story the exhibition was trying to tell although it had some great pictures in it and was very visually stimulating. Was it talking about the history of bridges, the building of them, the social impact or just how nice they look? It seemed to be a bit of all of these which meant as a whole it lacked focus. I liked the idea put forward that that the river both unites London, as it runs from east to west but also divides the north from the south. Also the idea that bridges are part of views, can frame views and can be the place from which you view a scene. I loved some photographs by George Davison Reid in the 1930s taken over three years and representing a walk along the river. Also Piranesi’s design for a bridge at Blackfriars although he never came to Lo...