Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at Waddington Custot of work by the sculptor Sophia Vari. The core of this show were Vari’s abstract sculptors in bronze and marble. The black and white works looked impressive en masse and I loved their solid but soft look. Also shown were her paintings and collages with a Cubist feel but in some the overlapping shapes had shadows and looked like pinboards. I loved some blue ones in the smaller room called “I Love Greece” from 2009 and they perfectly captured the colours, heat and calm of a warm climate. Closed 27 January 2024  

Bright, glossy exhibition at Waddington Custot of new work by Ian Davenport. I was excited to see these as I'd recently come across a large, public installation by Davenport by the O2 in Greenwich and wanted to see more work by him. The main works are large, striped pictures where the paint has been allowed to either skew across the bottom of the work or apparently flow onto the floor. A couple of others looked as if paint had been thrown at the canvas in quite a precise way. I loved the mix of a Bridget Riley type precision with mess. Closed 10 November 2023  

Effective exhibition at Waddington Custot of sculpture and drawings by Bernar Venet. These works looked wonderful in the white gallery space. The sculptures were called Angles and were purely mathematical works. It was refreshing to read that he presented mathematics as a subject “for its clarity as a subject with no disagreement over its meaning”. Compared to some of the nonsense I’ve read in exhibitions recently this was refreshingly simple. I liked the vistas across the gallery of the works as well as looking into them at the clashing lines. The drawings seemed to be of the sculptures rather than for their production and were a nice contrast to the three dimensional works. Closes 12 November 2022

Charming exhibition at Waddington Custot of work by March Avery, the daughter of Milton Avery whose show at Royal Academy I’d been to in the morning. She’s 90 this year and still painting six days a week. Her work is similar to her father in style but more gentle. Some of the latter work of children gets a bit sentimental but then you find the wonderful “Tall Pines II” with an Expressionist background. I love her paired down figures who seem comfortable in their own skins.   Closes 17 September 2022 Review Telegraph  

Colourful exhibition at Waddington Custot examining how Patrick Caulfield looked at light and shade across various times of day. These featured Caulfield’s signature style of flat-coloured planes with hard black outlines using domestic items such as lamp shades and wine glasses such as “Still Life: Father’s Day” from 1975, a pipe. Tulips, a lamp and ivy. I loved the 3D effect of “Wall Lights” from 1988 and the four screen-prints “Interior: Morning, Noon, Evening and Night” which showed the same scene in different colourways. Closed 15 November 2019

Fun exhibition at Waddington Custot of work by John Wesley from throughout his career. The title comes from Wesley himself to describe the repetition in his work. The show had a pop art feel to it with very bold and district pictures and objects. I particularly loved the objects including a tall blue table with picture of women on the four sides of its base. Also an old fashioned suitcase with a couching naked female figure. The pictures were fun to and I loved picture of repeated pop art versions of the classic portrait of Proust against a pale blue background. Also a different take on counting sheep with a picture of a blue bed with two pink bulls floating over it! Closed on 22 October 2016