Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful installation in the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College by Luke Jerram. The work consists of a 7m wide model of Mars based on NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data. Jerram had previously done similar installations of the Earth and the Moon in the same space and has since done one of the Sun. The planet floats ethereally in the space and has a similar colour palette to the busy painting around it. I think the Earth was my favourite as it is a more familiar image with more features. A commentary board highlights images of the god Mars and of Galileo on the ceiling.   Closed 20 January 2025

Delightful exhibition in the visitors’ Centre at the Old Royal Naval College Greenwich looking at the Chocolate House run by Grace Tosier in Blackheath in the 18th century. Although the show was small, and used a lot of reproduction pieces, it told the story of this successful establishment clearly and used it to try the wider story of Greenwich from the collapse of the Tudor Palace to a new prosperity in the 18th century. It also explained the chocolate industry and how it became more popular after the British occupied Jamaica in 1655. You could have easily missed the main installation of the show, a lovely recreation of the establishment with a video and soundtrack of likely discussions which took place there. It was hidden behind a modern door to one side. Closes 3 November 2024  

Beautiful installation at the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College developed by Paul Cocksedge and supported by Carpenters Workshop Gallery. The work looked lovely in the space and presented you with a glittery mass forming a sphere. Close up you saw the individual pieces. It represents the amount of coal it takes to power a single 200W light bulb, turned on for a year, and is made of anthracite. It was a nice touch to also have an explanation of the two incidents where coal appears on James Thornhill’s ceiling. Fascinating to find out the original hospital was partly funded by a tax on coal coming into London. Closed 4 February 2024

Disappointing exhibition at the Information Centre of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich looking at the work of Sir Christopher Wren. I say disappointing because it turned out to be poorly explained projects by first year architecture students at the University of Greenwich. I  assumed they had been tasked with studying a spire of a London church by Wren, producing architectural drawings and building a model in cardboard. Few of the drawings mentioned which church was involved and none of the models were labelled. A bit more explanation would have elevated it above show and tell. More interesting was a project by Captivate, a spatial modelling research group, who have built a fly through animation of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, including the hospital buildings by Wren. Closed 3 September 2023

Interesting exhibition in the undercroft of the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College of photographs by Hamish MacPherson as part of the Wren300 celebrations. The photographs were atmospheric portraits of contemporary people involved in aspects of science and architecture pioneered by Sir Christopher Wren. A useful leaflet told you about the sitter and the aspect of Wrens work they represented. The pictures had an ethereal quality and were created using a flatbed scanner, which creates an intriguing and mysterious quality and as the commentary said gave the impression the sitters also “possess their own shifting legacies”. They made the research relevant to today while illuminating areas of Wrens interests which I hadn’t known about before such as the fact he developed two finger spelling alphabets for deaf people. No closing date given.

Ethereal installation at the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College by Luke Jerram. The work consists of a large, detailed model of the moon which dominates the Baroque space. As you entered the room it seems to float in the space and looks good from all angles. I did find though that close up you could see the joins in the structure which broke the magic. I saw Jerram’s previous installation in the space of the Earth which I thought worked better. I think it might have been hung higher and the detail was more familiar so you looked less at the mechanics. Closes 5 February 2023  

Thin exhibition at the Visitors’ Centre at the Old Royal Naval College marking visits by the Queen to the college over the years to mark the Platinum Jubilee. Information boards described a series of visits, illustrated with good photographs and visitors books. They were also showing the Pathe newsreel of the dinner to mark 150th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in the Painted Hall in 1955. They made good use of what they had and it brought back memories. I had a vague feeling I remembered watching the knighting of Sir Francis Chichester on tv but turns out I was only 5 so I suspect I don’t. Closes 29 August 2022

Charming exhibition at the Visitor Centre of the Old Royal Naval College of watercolours and drawings of the town. There was a nice collection of pictures arranged into sections on the park, town and river. Most startling was how busy the river was and I loved the stories of the businesses which sustained the ships. The descriptions were excellent and they came with a good map of where all the sites are now. There were a number of artists I’d not come across before, mainly talented 19th amateurs including Amelia Long and John Nixon, both of whom showed at the annual Royal Academy shows. Closed 27 February 2022    

Interesting sculpture trail on the King William Lawns of the Old Royal Naval College by Josie Spencer. I found these works by chance as I walked around Greenwich. I saw no adverts for them within the Painted Hall, where I had just been, and on explanation of them on site while I was there. I caught the eye of another lady who also looked intrigued but puzzled. I was therefore glad to find more information online later to realise that this was a temporary exhibit and not a new permanent feature. I loved their realistic but fragmented nature and the way they sat in the space looking like damaged classical works. The description mentions their different colours but I must admit I didn’t notice that at the time. I liked the way the one shown here combined a very finished real female figure and the jigsaw like male one. Closes 6 August 2021

Surreal installation in the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College by Luke Jerram. I’ve been wanting to see this work, which has travelled around the country for ages, but it seems to have just left various places I’ve visited so I was pleased to see it was going to be near where I live and it was a good excuse to go and see the recently refurbished Painted Hall. This giant, internally lit, scale replica of the earth hung in the hall and is meant to represent the view of the earth from space. It revolves slowly and there were couches set up which people had sunk onto to watch it mesmerised. It was accompanied by a specially commissioned surround-sound composition by Dan Jones. The effect was beautiful, calming and a dazzling blue contrast to the muted colours of the walls and ceiling. As you looked at the hall itself you kept looking back and being surprised to see it hanging there. It felt like it had been captured in the space. A strange bringing of the whole of the outsid...

Fascinating small exhibition at the Old Royal Naval College Visitors’ Centre looking at black sailors who had passed through the Royal Hospital for Seamen and the effect they had had on the area. This show was mainly information boards with just a few artefacts from the family of John Simmons who served at Trafalgar and is shown in this picture with his Trafalgar medal. However it was packed with stories and insight into the area in the 18th and 19th century. What a fantastic piece of research! The Royal Navy was the largest employer of free black labour at the time in Britain however the hospital did not record the race of new pensioners just their county of origin so it isn’t clear how many of them were black. It is likely that many registered as American were black former slaves. The show pointed out that in the navy all the sailors lived equally on board ship and probably at the hospital, rank was more important than race. As pensioners could live in or out of the hospital in ...

Interesting exhibition at the Visitor Centre of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich marking 100 years since the founding of the Women’s Royal Naval Service and looking in particular at the role the college played in their training. This was a small exhibition but told the story clearly and well and made good use of photographs and a few objects. They had used nice quotes hanging from the ceiling. It had been researched by members of the University of the Third Age. It looked at how the service had changed over the years starting in the First World War to provide cooks, drivers and telephonists to free up men for the ships through to the first WRNS to go to sea in 1990 and the amalgamation with the Royal Navy in 1993. There were some delightful and interesting stories. Closes on 3 December 2017