Cathy's Art Diary

Moving exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of 18 large portraits by Colin Davidson. The portraits were of people whose lives had been affected by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They were painted in 2014-15 and were originally shown at the Ulster Museum in Belfast and more recently exhibited at Stormont’s Parliament Buildings. The works had an installation like effect shown around three walks of a small room. Each work was impactful and worked well even in such a large scale. It was worth slowing down and reading the individual, often very moving, stories.   How soon we have forgotten what an awful time that was.   Closes 23 February 2025

Disappointing exhibition at the Imperial War Museum on the troubles in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s till the Peace Agreement of 1998. I had been looking forward to the show having watched a brilliant five part documentary on BBC recently and having of, of course, remembered the subject dominating the news bulletins of my childhood and teenage years. The display felt quite thin. I liked the fact it had interesting written testimony from those involved on all sides but it made for a lot of standing and reading or listening. There were impressive photographs on light boxes but few artefacts. The show concentrated on the ideologies and conflicting views of events but there was little information on what actually happened, the role of the British Army or how incidents spilled out into mainland Britain. They did well with the three small rooms allocated to the show but the subject deserves much better coverage. Just go back and watch the documentary, it gave me a much better o...