Cathy's Art Diary

Strange exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Halls looking at life in the oceans.   I say strange because I wasn’t sure what level it was aimed at. There were games and a child friendly app but also very detailed information on the creatures on display which I found a bit impenetrable. This was an expensive show and they did their best to recreate an underwater feel but it felt like being in bunker hung with a few curtains. The much billed virtual reality part cost extra and a sign said that the content might not relate to the exhibition so basically something for the children to play with along with the ball park. Oh and the film seemed to be an episode of Blue Planet and not related to the content you had just seen. I went round wondering if I was looking at models or preserved creatures and they don’t tell you till the end that they are produced by a method called plasticisation which replaced the moisture from the creature and replaces it with a plastic polymer....

Delightful exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of work by the natural scientist and artist Maria Merian. This exhibition told the story of Merian’s life well illustrating it with her work. Her step father was a still life artist who taught her. After a failed marriage she moved to Amsterdam with her daughters where she became interested in insects being brought back form the Dutch colony of Suriname. This inspired her to travel there and study the insects and plants in situ. The result of which was an amazing book of pictures and descriptions. The pictures were lovely delicate watercolours. She made a point of painting the insects a life sized and to depict them on the correct plants. She also painted different phases of an insect’s development in one picture for example showing the caterpillar, pupa and the butterfly they become. There was a nice section on her legacy talking about the pictures have been used by scientists and designers. Closes on 9 October 2016. ...