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

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

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.

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...