Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of Charleston Festival with fashion collector and muse Daphne Guinness. Interviewed by fashion writer NJ Stevenson, Guinness discussed visiting courtier houses in Paris and her fascination with going to the see the cutters and embroiders called Les Petites Mains. She talked about her fashion collection and had examples from it on stage with her. She was wearing the most amazing platform shoes with no heels which puzzled many of the audience. For the Charleston audience it was equally exciting to realise that she is the granddaughter of a Mitford.  

Fun interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with Grayson Perry around his current exhibition at the Wallace Collection. This was a lively discussion wrangled by journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer who led Perry into why he did the show and how he found himself reacting to a collection whose art he found he didn't like. As ever with Perry I found myself noting down quotes and soundbites to think about later such as "narrative is the most potent form of art", "I'm becoming a militant traditionalist", of AI "It's like a pedantic 14 year old" and of his studio set up "I have Colin who does the photocopying". Review Guardian  

Delightful interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with Paul Tazewell, the costume designer for Wicked. The talk was originally given the night before the premier in London but I had to listen to it as a recording however that did mean that I’d already seen the film so I was enthralled as I’d loved it. Tazewell was ably interviewed by Simon Sladen from the museum leading him through processes and characters. They sat on stage with two of the costumes. I loved the detail of the work and the thought and philosophy behind it. It makes me want to go and see the film again!

Moving  interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with the photographer Don McCullin. Sean O’Hagan, a brilliant chair, used images to guide McCullin to discuss his life and work from his iconic war photography to his current landscapes. McCullin came across as someone deeply affected by the war work while also denying this. Chatting to other audience members afterwards we were struck by the contradictions in what he said, quotes like “these are things that suffocate my thinking “, “I’ve never found the freedom to enjoy my life” and “I do landscape to avoid my guilt”. Sadly the event ended abruptly before the Q&A as one of the audience was taken in and they had to clear the tent. It added a dramatic ending to a tense event but I’m pleased to report they were fine.  

Fascinating interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with artist and set designer Es Devlin. The talk focused on her book “The Atlas of Es Devlin” which she described as an ‘active process’. She said writing it was about finding ‘fragments of self in a collaborative process’. The book outlines some of her major projects to date and the inspiration behind them and the interviewer, curator and writer Ekow Eshun, teased out the details of these pieces and particularly what it is like to collaborate with artists from other genres. She also talked about a work in progress based on short portrait sittings with strangers which will be shown 2m tall in an installation called “The Congregation “ to appear in the Autumn. It looks amazing.  

Charming online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with the costumier John Bright. Bright was interviewed by curator and film historian Keith Brodwick and they went through Bright’s career starting with BC costume dramas but with an emphasis on the work he did on Merchant Ivory films. He talked about how he uses vintage pieces where possible. He did this work via his company Cosprop which he wet up in 1965. They discussed collaboration with actors so it was fascinating that Helena Bonham-Carter joined the conversation to talk about the importance of the clothes to building a role and the process of working with Bright on a number of films including “A Room with a View”. The talk ended by looking at Bright’s recent charity work and the creation of the Bright Foundation to bring art education to young people with a theatre and museum space in Hastings.

Engaging interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival by conceptual artist Jeremy Deller. Deller was interviewed by arts producer, Claire Doughty, who took him through his career and major works. I was pleased at how many of them I had come across. It really helped that there was a screen with illustrations of the projects. The projects ranged from the video project re-enacting the Battle of Ongreave in the miners’ strike, through the wonderful piece putting young men in First World War Uniforms on the streets to mark the centenary of start of the Battle of the Somme, which in wished I’d seen, to the inflatable Stonehenge. They talked about how the work was commissioned and where he got his ideas from. I’ll certainly be looking out for his projects in the future.

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.  

Delightful interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. Rhodes was joined by renowned milliner, Piers Atkinson, and curator and lecturer at the London College of Fashion, N. J. Stevenson to talk us through her career and discuss the process of archiving her collection and records. I was most interested to hear about the process of the archiving. Rhodes admitted she has been a hoarder and has kept an example of at least one of every piece she has designed as well as the drawings for them. It is a working archive and she listed the projects she is working on at the moment based on the vintage designs. The best part though was when she invited members of the audience up to don a pink wig and one of her designs. It was fascinating to see how, because a lot of the dresses were wrap around, they fitted and suited an assortment of ages and sizes and very one looked fabulous. It was lovely to see her obvious delight in dressin...

Fascinating online interview with photographer Michael Najjar to mark Photo London. Najjar has become fascinated by space exploration since watching a live rocket launch in 2011. Since then he has built up a body of 65 photographs and 5 video installations in his Outer Space series. He sees space as a unique cultural and scientific world. He discussed how he had undergone space training in Russia with cosmonauts and had experimented with taking photographs in a weightless environment. He constructs realities to show the possibilities of space. He then took us through a selection of his works explaining how they were achieved and what they represent. There was a sense of the sublime about a number of these and in fact the picture shown here was inspired by Caspar David Friedrick’s “The Ice Field”. It shows the wreck of the Virgin Atlantic Galactica in 2014 made up of a digitally manipulated press footage. Sadly didn’t manage to get to Photo London to see the works in the person ...

Enlightening online interview from the Art Fund with contemporary artists Lubaina Himid. Himid was interviewed by Zoe Whitney, director of the Chisham Hill Gallery and former phd student of Himid to mark the current exhibition of her work at Tate Modern. They discussed her work in detail including the current show and a work for the New York High Line in 2019. It was fascinating to hear Himid say how she doesn’t fee a piece of work has been finished until it’s been seen by an audience and how she likes to revisit shows to see how people are interacting with the work. They talked about HImid’s early life and how she was influenced by her textile designing mother who took her around art galleries, museums and department stores looking for inspiration for her work but also discussing what they were looking at. The Q&A session was lively with good questions which widened the discussion through what effect winning the Turner Prize had had, what responses to her art had she had wh...

Fascinating online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with Janty Yates, the designer of the costumes for “House of Gucci”. I was pleased I had seen and enjoyed the film a few days before the talk. Of course, being about Gucci, clothes were an important part of the styling of the film. The interviewer, Oriole Cullen, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, started by asking Yates about her Oscar winning work on “Gladiator” and she talked about how she had factories making togas for the scenes with 3000 extras. This led her into talking about working with Ridley Scott who also directed the Gucci film. She talked about her process and how an artist, Laura Heath, draws all the outfits on the actors to share with the director and to be used in publicity by the studio. She told us how 30% of the clothes in the film were vintage rented, from costume houses and some from Lady Gaga’s own archives. I was fascinated to hear her talk about how involved Gaga was in choosing...

Fascinating streaming of an interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with the Oscar winning costume designer Sandy Powell. Powell was interviewed by Bethan Holt, the fashion news and feature writer at the Telegraph, who started by asking how Powell began working in the industry and what got her to the top, the answer to the latter being “luck”! They discussed about how she researches her projects and I loved the quite of “there is always another way of doing something”. She talked about how she is driven to work on a film by the script and how she can’t start working on a costume until she knows who will be in the role.   The Q&A session was vibrant from questions about which actors were most involved in the design of their costumes, what it was like to see her outfits in exhibitions, about her work on Mary Poppins Returns and the difference between big and small budget films. I was fascinated to hear about her project to gather autographs on a white suit, a tuill...

Fascinating online interview from the National Gallery with contemporary artist, Marc Padeu. Padeu was interviewed by Jenny Sliwka, a Renaissance art historian, about the influence of Caravaggio on his work. She took five of his pictures of a religious society in Cameroon known for their production of bananas and coffee and analysed the links between the two artists. Padeu’s were bright pictures often closely based in composition on Caravaggio. The protagonist often have brightly coloured hair to reflect the effect of the chemicals they work with. He talked about how he put himself through school by painting frescos in churches and while painting a black Madonna and Child he realised the religious power for the nuns in the church he was working on of seeing biblical figures who looked like them. It was a slightly awkward talk as Padeu didn’t speak very good English so it was pre-recorded and Sliwka interviewed him in French and then translated. This made the discussion a bit sti...

Interesting online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, which campaigns for ethical production in the fashion industry. Tamsin Blanchard, Editor, 'Hole & Corner' magazine, interviewed Orsola about her new book “Loved Clothes Last” advocating the mending of clothes. Tamsin described the book as a “why to” book rather than a “how to” one. They talked about Orsola’s fashion brand using upcycled remnants from the fashion industry, her work supporting ethical designers and manufacturers via the Aesthetica initiative at London Fashion Week and the work of Fashion Revolution. They then looked at some of the ideas and suggestions in the book including what emergency repair tools Orsola keeps in her handbag and the idea of having mending stations in high street stores. She advocated thinking though the life cycle of a garment before buying it, how you will look after it, how it might be repaired and if it might...

Interesting online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with contemporary artist Katerina Jebb. Oriole Cullen skilfully led Katerina through her career and influences. Katerina’s work is photographic montage often using a standard scanner to record either a whole object or person or to scan them in sections and reassemble the parts, a bit like the Hockney Polaroid montages. Katerina did not always talk that clearly about her work but I guess, like many artists, she is not always sure how a work happened at one point she said “I don’t know why I made it, I just made it”. However she said some insightful things about art in general and I loved it when she said art “should have the capacity to change your frequency.” When the V&A reopens she will have an installation inspired by a sampler by Elizabeth Parker from the 1830s which simply, in red thread on a cream textile, outlines the terrible things that have happened to her as a domestic servant. This is a remarkable s...

Probing online interviews from ARTNews with the CEOs of Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Manion Maneker, president and editorial director of Art Media, was an excellent interviewer and asked some awkward and interesting questions firstly to Charles Stewart of Sotheby’s then Guillaume Cerulti of Christie’s. Both talked about the challenges of the last year and Covid-19 but also about how they saw the future of auction houses. Interestingly they took slightly different viewpoints with Stewart felling the move to online had brough big changes that wouldn’t got away such as a move away from the rigidly timed main sales. However Cerulti felt that these would return as normality returned and that there was a real desire for people to get back together in this way. He emphasised the social aspects of sales and the importance of what you might overhear when you are there and the buzz in the room. Maneker also asked about the role of luxury goods in their businesses as well as the growing import...

Fascinating online interview from the Art Newspaper with Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics analysing how the art market has been affected by the Covid crisis. This was the last session in a series on the art market "New Models for New Times: Rethinking the Art Market in a Changing World" in which McAndrew was interviewed by Georgina Adam, editor-at-large of the Arts Newspaper. McAndrew took us through various charts and graphs of how the marker has reacted to the crisis. She felt the worse performers were the mid-range galleries selling at $250-500K with all galleries sales being down an average of 30%. Auction sales were down 50% in value compared to the previous year but partly because the number of lots were down. She compared the real and online markets, with online obviously increasing with online sales making up 37% of sales this year as opposed to 10% the year before. They then discussed how the galleries and auction houses had adapted to the issues and reflected ...

Fascinating online interview as part of the Chelsea History Festival with Lucian Freud’s biographer William Feaver as he publishes Volume 2 of his life of the artist .  The talk ranged over both books to discuss Freud’s life and work as well as Feaver’s relationship with him as his chosen biographer. There were great illustrations using familiar figures and some less known ones. The interviewer was good, keeping the talk on track and asking some searching questions. I love Freud’s work but find him a difficult character but I did learn new things about him including the fact he was given two dogs as a wedding present, shared the royalties from his grandfather Sigmund’s books with his cousins and tattooed Kate Moss.

Fascinating talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with the artists Peter Blake being interviewed by the art critic Martin Gayford. Gayford took Blake gently through his life using a series of his paintings as talking points. They talked about how Blake’s ‘arts’ as he was growing up were speedway, wrestling and fairgrounds and about his contemporaries at art college. I particularly enjoyed hearing Blake discuss his self-portrait of 1961 where he wears denim covered in badges. He described his clothes as an outfit and likened himself in the picture to a Pierrot. He talked about moving to the country in the 1970s and founding the Brotherhood of Ruralists and about later series of pictures. He laughed that at 75 he had now entered his “late period”. The questions of course included one on the Sergeant Pepper cover to which Blake’s reply was “I nearly got away with it.” He talked about how little he was paid for it particularly as his agent signed ...