Cathy's Art Diary

Insightful discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of their Small Wonder Festival looking at the newly published first volume of Lucien Freud's letters. It brought together the editor of the letters Martin Gayford and Freud's daughter, Esther Freud, to be interviewed by the art historian Michael Bird. They discussed what new things they had learnt from the letters which take us up to 1954 when Freud was starting to find success. They also talked about how he adopted different voices in the letters for different people and even in some cases different handwriting. Interestingly the letters have been published with the printed text alongside a facsimile of each letter as many of them are illustrated. Oddly enough I am booked to hear Gayford on this topic again soon, so watch this space, but I suspect that will be a more of a lecture rather than this engaging style.  

Engaging interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of their Small Wonder Festival with Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves. Moir was discussing his book on birds which pair his paintings of birds with short facts about them with fellow birder, David Bramwell. The talk veered more towards the birds than the art but it was a witty conversation with insights into his working practice and a new series he is doing with Sky Arts. The Q&A session was lively with questions about birds, art and whether he has been fishing with Bob Mortimer.  

Fascinating   talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of their Small Wonder Festival bringing together contemporary artist Nathan Coley and DJ James Lavelle. The speakers were friends and had been brought together as both use snippets from others work to make their art. Coley takes snippets of text and makes giant illuminated signs of them and there has been one at Charleston over recent months. They discussed where they found their source material, how they then made these into finished works, their attitude to getting permission to use other people’s work and the role of the audience. They didn’t always agree with each other which led to a lively but friendly discussion.   It was interesting to see a rolling slide show Coley’s work above them as I didn’t know it well, apart from the Charleston piece, and to realise how the same words in different settings seemed to mean different things. He also talked about being commissioned by Charleston.