Cathy's Art Diary

Good exhibition at the National Gallery for this annual portrait award. I always enjoy this exhibition and there is usually a theme which develops and this year was self portraits. My favourite was “Portrait sketch of Charles” by HK Park which showed a portrait sketch on an easel next to a full picture of the subject so putting the sketch and the person in one space. A really clever idea! Also on my wish list a slightly Bloomsbury picture by Fred Clark of his brother in law, painted to get to know him better, a picture by Eric De Vere of his son as he went into the army and Ewan McClure Rembrandt like self-portrait. Oddest picture was “The Shadow of Life” by Lucy Jones, an interesting expressionist work but a portrait, I’m not sure! Review Times Independent Evening Standard    

Annual exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery for this award for portrait photography. This year I preferred the commissioned work such at Hilary Mantel by Michael Birt and Michael Stipe by Matthew Lloyd. There were also a nice selection of Olympian’s, obviously the subject of many features this year needing photographs. However my favourite picture had to be “Dahlia” by Mark McAvoy. It’s a picture of his 7 week old daughter taken for her passport photo and a wonderfully funny picture of a rather serious baby. I had to buy the book to have a copy of this picture but I’m not sure why I find it so funny. I guess it’s because you don’t often see an upright baby and therefore look at it face to face as you would an adult. Review Evening Standard

Annual exhibition for the Landscape photographer of the year Award held at the National Theatre. There were over 100 photographs of landscapes in the UK and many of them were stunning.   They all made you realise how breath takingly beautiful areas of the UK can be and, much as though I am a city girl at heart, it did make we want to get out into the countryside more.   I particularly like photographs with height that fill the frame with the landscape and reduce the sky. There was a lovely one of very green fields stretching as far as you could see with one farm building illuminated in the middle.

Exhibition for this competition which shows very best in contemporary portrait photography at the National Portrait Gallery . I found it was a bit heavy on Eastern European works and photographers which gave it quite a stolid feeling. However there were some wonderful images. My favourite was “Tiger, Rag, Johnny and Emma” by Martin Usbourne which shows two dog walkers and their clients! As you may realise from this blog I am a sucker for a dog in art! This is from a series on dogs and their owners in Hoxton which I am going to have to Google! Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard

Wonderful exhibition of wildlife photographs at the Natural History Museum of the best photos in this annual competition. I always mean to go to this annual exhibition but often run out of time. This year are some stunning images in about 14 categories. They are beautifully displayed with back lighting which gives some of the pictures an almost 3D quality. The pictures show a number of things. Some are studies in patience with photographers having waited hours and in some cases months for the image they want of a rare animal. Others are studies in technique or texture. I like the fact you don’t need to have travelled thousands of miles or be intrepid to enter, many of the best images are local to where the photographer lives. My favourite shot was one of a close up of a rain drop on a leaf with another leaf reflected in the drop by Darren Leal. In the same category “In praise of plants” I also like a water lily photographed from below by Frederick Ehrenstrom. Reviews Evening Standard

Annual exhibition at Tate Britain of the short listed artists in the Turner Prize. I must admit none of them made me stand back and think “silly” this year. Goshka Macuga looked at archiving, exhibition making and museum display using the works and relationship of Paul Nash and Eileen Agar. This therefore grabbed me from the start and I loved the two large, half cylinders in glass. Cathy Wilkes, had done the manikin on the toilet with supermarket counter, which got the most publicity. I could hear my friend Linda’s voice in my ear saying “Messy”! Runa Islam, was three video installations. I liked the one of breaking china which had a strange tension like an artistic Aunt Sally! Finally Mark Leckey, who won this year, used found material to create images. I liked the fact that the small AV displays were shown on old projectors so making the thing projecting the art part of the piece. Reviews Times Independent Evening Standard

Exhibition at the National Theatre of an annual competition of landscape photographs. I must admit I didn’t have long to do this, just the interval of a play while eating an ice cream but there were some beautiful images. Scotland seemed to come out of it best but its amazing how pictures of where you grew up (in my case Oxfordshire) are so recognisable.