Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum looking at how the fashion industry can reduce its environmental impact. The show was divided into three sections looking at innovations in fabrics, design and how new tools such as AI are being used by designers and how our relationship with clothes is changing with an emphasis on repair and recycling. Each section highlighted a handful of innovative projects from fibres made from bulrushes in Manchester through the use of computer programs to reduce the need for prototypes and a shirt made in modular sections which can be remodelled. Closes August 2025    

Peaceful installation at Somerset House by Zheng Bo. The work consisted of a meandering courtyard created with troughs of ten types of bamboo. The work was in situ to mark Earth Day on 22 April.   You were invited to sit among it and draw. I don’t usually do interactive features of installations but I had time so I took a clip board and spent some time sketching. It was very relaxing. Closed 28 April 2024  

Five interesting exhibitions at the Centre for British Photography looking at how people impact the landscape. I am cheating a bit by combining these shows into one post but they all fit the theme of the main show and I must admit I’m quite behind with blogging so this seems quite convenient! The main show featured work by a selection of photographers looking at how the past is visible in nature and recent inclusions into the landscape. Highlights included John Davies pictures of aeroplanes vapour trails, Paul Seawright’s photographs of the sites of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland and Mitra Tabrizian’s strange upside down work, or is it? Downstairs there was work by Mandy Barker reacting to plastic pollution in the ocean. She brought together similar artefacts found on beaches into montages often looking like kaleidoscope images or in one case a Dutch floral still-life. She aims to raise awareness of the issue via her art. Upstairs was three small displays Helen Seats la...

Stimulating one day conference organised by the National Gallery at King’s College London bringing together academics and practitioners from artistic, theological and ecological backgrounds to discuss how three paintings from the gallery reflect themes of creation. The conference was the culmination of this year’s Art and Religion Research programme which had had been discussing the topic via three paintings; Rachel Ruysch’s “Flowers in a Vase” (1685), Claude Monet’s “Flood Waters” (1896) and Van Gogh’s “Long Grass with Butterflies” (1890). Although the networks are closed, they had opened this conference to a wider audience. At times I found it a bit too philosophical for me but as I typed it up I realise I had got a lot of new ideas from it and new things to think about when looking at pictures. The format of the day was three panels with two speakers on each talking about one of the pictures. The Ruysh speakers set up opposing arguments about whether the work was about extincti...

Mixed exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by 15 contemporary artists rethinking our response to environmental issues. I say mixed as there were some lovely works but there were also some pieces which didn’t seem to fit the theme. My favourite was a new version of Agnes Denes’s “The Living Pyramid”, a structure planted up and dominating the room. I also liked Ackroyd and Harvey’s photographic photosynthesis portraits of environmental activists created with grass seed which developed in different shades of green depending how much light fell on it. A big shout out to Cornelia Parker’s video of children talking about the environment especially to a girl who dealt brilliantly with a boy mansplaining! Closed 3 September 2023 Reviews Times Evening Standard    

Interesting exhibition at the Design Museum looking at what design can do to reduce waste in what we produce and consume. You enter the show through some shocking statistics some too huge to take in, such as the world produces 2bn tonnes of rubbish a year, seven times the weight of the world’s population, and others more personal such as a T shirt is worn an average of seven times in its life. There were some good installations/art works to bring these figures to life such as a large handing made of plastic bottle tops which was just one winter’s worth from the beaches of Cornwall. There was a fascinating section on how we got to this place with a timeline on the invention of plastics and the introduction of convenience goods. I could see how, unwittingly, we were all involved in this. It looked at how we planned obsolescence into the life spam of a product to boost the economy after the Depression and the Second World War. The show became more positive when it began to look at ...

Delightful exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society of work by members of the Wilderness Art Collective, 15 contemporary artists working on or with landscape. There was a great variety of work in this small show cleverly arranged and hung to make it feel more spacious and to give each artist their own space. The works did make me think about landscape and the environment in quite a visceral way. Shown here is an installation by Louise Ann Wilson originally for Dorothy Wordsworth’s bedroom at Royal Mount which felt like an intellectual Tracey Emin “Bed”.   It shows how Dorothy used memory to transport herself into the landscape from her bed. I liked Brian Thompson’s small stratified sculptures of rivers and mountains   and Peter Geraerts stunning Arctic and Antarctic photographs with a hyperreal feel to them in their clarity. I had a fascination conversation at the end with Catalina Christensen who had a display of metal and earth pigments she had collected...

Confused exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at how the natural environment has influenced clothes and fashion over the centuries. I say confused because it had too many themes, from the materials clothes are made from through to flowers and animals that have influenced design trends. Overlying the whole was a rather heavy handed look at the sustainability of clothing. Any of these themes would have made a good smaller show but put together the whole thing became unwieldy. The ground floor gallery looked mainly at how all clothes were made from natural products before manmade fibres were invented in the 20th century. It’s obvious when you think about it but I’d not realised it before and w2as surprised at what some of the materials were made of. You’d think this would all be good but the show did look at the damage some of these processes did to the environment and the social deprivation it brought.   I did like the section on the use of flowers in design...

Interesting exhibition at Somerset House shortlisted entries for this global award in photography and sustainability with the theme this year of disorder. There were some beautiful images. Oddly enough two photographers played with the idea of the classic still life. Valerie Belin drew on vanitas and momento mori paintings but using modern decorative but functionless mass produced articles. Ori Gersht played with floral still lives doing photos of flower arrangements being blown up. I saw a work by him at the Science Museum and they are very striking as bits of roses appear to fly towards you. Many of the works were very hard hitting and moving such as Alixandra Fazzina’s picture of Somali refugees wading out to a boat to take them to Yemen the title of which records that only 11 of them arrived alive. My favourite was a stunning picture of a man neck deep in water by Gideon Mendel which is part of a project called Drowning World in which he travels to flooded area to...

Thought provoking exhibition for the second Syngenta Photography Award at Somerset House focusing on scarcity and waste to spark dialogue about our changing planet. I am not usually very interested in climate change issues, sorry I know I should be, but this really got me thinking about the contrast of not having enough of something causing problems while in other areas having too much is the issue!   The quotes around the rooms were as interesting as the pictures such as the fact that in less than two hours the waste produced by the UK could fill the Albert Hall. The pictures of unplanned industrialisation in developing countries was interesting.   It’s great that these countries have developed heavy industries but the cost of doing this in an unplanned unregulated way are shocking such as the sand mining in West Bengal. I was horrified by the city of Cerro de Pasco in Peru which is surrounded by an open pit mine which is expanding and eroding the city. Stri...