Cathy's Art Diary

Useful online lecture from the Victoria and albert Museum introducing their new exhibition on Gabrielle Chanel. The three curators of the show, Oriole Cullen, Stephanie Wood and Connie Burks led us though the structure of the exhibition.   They explained how they wanted to focus on Chanel’s design work and to just take a light touch to her life story. They discussed some of the choices they made in choosing the pieces to show and explained how they covered periods, such as the Second World War for which there were no exhibits using archive material. They used some beautiful pictures to illustrate the talk and I can’t wait to go and see the show. It’s on my list for next week.

Interesting online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with contemporary artist Katerina Jebb. Oriole Cullen skilfully led Katerina through her career and influences. Katerina’s work is photographic montage often using a standard scanner to record either a whole object or person or to scan them in sections and reassemble the parts, a bit like the Hockney Polaroid montages. Katerina did not always talk that clearly about her work but I guess, like many artists, she is not always sure how a work happened at one point she said “I don’t know why I made it, I just made it”. However she said some insightful things about art in general and I loved it when she said art “should have the capacity to change your frequency.” When the V&A reopens she will have an installation inspired by a sampler by Elizabeth Parker from the 1830s which simply, in red thread on a cream textile, outlines the terrible things that have happened to her as a domestic servant. This is a remarkable s...