Cathy's Art Diary

Striking exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at the career of Letizia Battaglia. Battaglia mainly worked as a press photographer in Sicily and as such had covered Mafia activity on the island as well as daily life. The Mafia murder photographs were graphic but stunning. At first I found I could hardly look at them, but after a while they lost their reality and the most shocking aspect was that people were carrying on everyday life around them. My favourite works were the pictures of everyday life particularly religious activity and her pictures of children. The works were shown in no particular order to show their   breadth and the recurrence of themes. The lower galley was hung like an installation she had done in 2015 when the works had been hung from the ceiling. Closes 23 February 2025 Review Guardian    

Confusing online course from the London Art History Society on Norman influence on architecture and material culture in Southern Italy. I say confusing because the history and many of the architectural terms were new to me. I think some people on the course had already done others with the speaker John McNeill so were more familiar with some of the background. It would have really helped to have a glossary of terms and an outline of the people and dates involved in the handout for reference. I know my English Norman architecture of the 11th and 12th century quite well so it might have helped me to make comparisons or say more about why they were different. McNeill had some great illustrations, I suspect many of which he had taken himself, which gave a good sense of the buildings many of which were now ruins. He made good use of floor plans but I’m afraid I did confuse them over time and they were very similar. That said I discovered some wonderful sites and have definitely added ...

Fascinating exhibition at the British Museum on the history and art of Sicily focusing on the Greek and Norman periods. This was a well set out and explained exhibition and I loved the inclusion of large scale photographs of the main sites to give you a real sense of being there. Like the Sunken Cities show though the show was stolen by some stunning objects. In the Greek section was a pottery basin on a stand from 1400BC that you could have put in your garden now it was so perfect. This was near to a near perfect flat gold bowl with bulls on it. I loved the gorgon head gable end and think we need to revive them. Most intriguing was the section on the cult of Persephone and the female ceremonies which seemed to involve lots of alcohol and piglets! I loved the little statues of goddesses with small pigs! Book me in! I loved the Norman section as I had studied this at A Level. I hadn’t realised that a lot of the original palace still existed. I was interested to se...