Cathy's Art Diary

Moving exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the work of Do Ho Suh. Walk the House is a South Korean saying which Suh takes to describe how we carry multiple places with us across space and time. This show examines art works he has made from and about his homes in South Korea, London and New York. I found the idea of us carrying the places we have lived deeply moving and the way he represents them delicate and touching. From the rubbing he made of his childhood home I was hooked. The show made you slow down and reflect. At the heart of the exhibition was a tunnel of spaces from his houses and flats made of diaphanous material. From the installation photographs I had assumed they were neon but they are much subtler than I expected. I loved the light effect within them but also the attention to detail like this electric plug. Reading the blurb I discovered he has measured all the spaces he has lived in in order to carry them with him and reproduce them. I loved the blend of imagi...

Disorientating exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the pioneers of electronic art. It was too much for me as I suspected it would be. Too many flashing lights and playing with perception.   The labels were quite convoluted plus hard to read with the flashing and I just couldn’t engage. I did like Jesus Rafael Soto’s “Cardinal” which hung rods in front of lines to appear 2D from the front, although 3D in reality, and Lilliane Lijn’s “Bride” however I just couldn’t stay very long in any of the installation style rooms. Oh well I tried! Closed 1 June 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Welcome return of Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider sculpture to Tate Modern to mark 25 years since it was the first art work to greet visitors to the then newly opened gallery. I don’t remember seeing the work at the time so this was a lovely opportunity to fill that gap. It suits the space on the bridge of the Turbine Hall beautifully. This is a lovely way to mark the anniversary. Entitled “Maman” I hadn’t realised the sculpture includes a sack of eggs which seems to give it an infinite future. Closes 25 August 2025

Exuberant exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and art of the performance artist Leigh Bowery. I’ve always been intrigued by Bowery’s work, focused on his own body, since discovering the wonderful portraits of him by Lucien Freud and here it was laid out in rooms designed to look like his home and the clubs he ran and frequented. There was an interesting mix of costumes, archive material and photographs and paintings of him so it represented both him as an artist and as a muse. You got a real sense of him as a person and of a group of friends. It was interesting to have already done the Outlaws show at the Fashion and Textile Museum which covered similar territory. Like that show it was also a good one for people watching as many of the punters seemed to come from a similar world. Closes 31 August 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Incomprehensible exhibition at Tate Modern on the art of experimental artist Mike Kelley. I’m sorry I tried but I just didn’t understand this show. I always find it hard to engage with conceptual art with a performance element in a static exhibition but it can work if well explained. I must admit I’d already done two exhibitions and an installation at the gallery so I probably wasn’t at my most receptive. That said I found the labels almost unreadable as they didn’t always explain where the work had been show nor really what it represented. I never found the overriding description for the last room so was left very confused. On the whole I didn’t find the work that attractive but that said I liked this revolving screen with projected images and I might try the wax tower with my Christmas candles! Closes 9 March 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Small exhibition at Tate Britain highlighting work by Helen Chadwick in their Artists’ Rooms series. This show complimented the Zanele Muholi, which was also on at the gallery, as it had some similar subject matter and for way the artists used their own body. I must admit I found the work hard to engage with. I think any one piece in a different context would have been interesting but I didn’t respond to it as a train of thought. I did however rather like these sculptures made by Chadwick and a fellow, male artist peeing in the snow then making a cast of the shape made. I won’t be rushing out and trying it though! Closes 8 June 2025

Impressive installation at Tate Modern by Mira Lee. This is the latest commission for the Turbine Hall and I’d not thought I’d like it as, from photos, it looked like pieces of hanging meat but it was much more complex with the ‘skins’ being made on site via water falling on material via a turbine and then drying the pieces here before hanging them. I assume over the course of the show the space will become more densely hung so I’ll definitely be back for another look. Reading the commentary the piece is remarkably nuanced with various references to industrial processes including those which originally went on in that space and it reuses features of the building such as a crane. Closes 16 March 2015 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the art of South African artist, Zanele Muholi. The work was mainly photographic documenting LGBTQIA+ life in South Africa to raise awareness of injustices and create positive visual histories. For this the artist often uses their own body. The work was presented via series of works. I loved the series Faces and Phases of Black lesbians, transgender and gender non-conforming people shown along two opposite walls of the gallery and the section on queering public space where they photograph people in spaces they would not have been allowed in under Apartheid. I was most struck though by their sculptures particularly this one which appears to balance on its toes. Closed 26 January 2025 Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard    

Vibrant exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the Blue Rider artists based around Munich in the early 20th century. I knew and liked the work of a number of these artists and love this period of art just before the First World War but it was fascinating to see them presented as a group. I did wish I’d done an introductory lecture on the show as I found the information available in the show was a bit disjointed. There was a new idea of charging £5 for a comprehensive small booklet on the show but I rather resent having to pay for that level of narrative. Criticism over, I loved the art which felt like the Bloomsbury Group on acid having discovered spirituality. I would have liked to know a bit more about the relationships between the artists and how they lived. My favourite pieces were where they painted each other and the world around them. The female artists came out of the show particularly well with Munter leading the field. I was interested to see her photography included in ...

Surprisingly good exhibition at Tate Modern on the art of Yoko Ono. It is difficult to show conceptual art in exhibitions, particularly when there is a performance or interactive element, but this exhibition succeeded in giving a flavour of events and planting their ideas in a way that does make you think and participate. The show worked in participation well. Some of the actions were taken up enthusiastically, like the room at the end where you were invited to take a blue pen and add to it and tables to play all white chess, but some others weren’t so popular like the being in a bag or the shaking hands through a hole in a wall. I felt a bit sorry for the attendants with the latter two. I loved the idea of Ono’s instruction pieces putting out an idea for artists and us to take up in some way. I thought I’d find the ‘peace’ pieces a bit vapid but actually I found them simple and profound. I loved the two acorns she sent to every world leader to plant for peace on her marriage to...

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern on the 20th century American artist Philip Guston. I’d done a course on Guston the week before and was very glad I had as his career was so varied I’m not sure I would have understood the trajectory of it just with the commentaries although they were good. You hardly believe that one artist did all the work as each period is so different. The show is chronological, starting with early pieces inspired by contemporary European art and the early Italian Renaissance. I was fascinated to see how his art developed purely from looking and that he had no formal training. There was a good section of his mural work which combined good archive material with easel works of the same period to show their style. I think these pieces were my favourites as they did remind me of Italian frescos. The period post Second World War saw him move into abstract expressionism along with other American artists. I never respond well to this type of art but it was wel...

Impressive and beautiful installation at Tate Modern by El Anatsui. Speaking to ideas of trade, slavery and colonialism, the meaning is fairly obvious from looking but there are also good, simple explanations of the three works or acts as Anatsui calls them. The three pieces fill the space and work from every angle. Make sure you walk round them and look for the sweet spot where the middle disjointed work becomes the Earth.   I like the sense that there is craft behind the work as well as being monumental! I’ll be back to see it again. Closes 14 April 2024 Reviews Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern of work by 36 contemporary African photographers who reimagine Africa’s place in the world. Arranged around three themes, identity and tradition, counter histories and imagined futures, the show discussed how there is no single history of Africa and the effects of colonialism. From the majestic portraits of Nigerian monarchs by George Osodi you were pulled into the images and ideas. I’m not sure I grasped all of them, and at times it became quite philosophical, but it certainly made me think. Images which stood out for me included Edson Chagas’s take on passport photos using traditional Bantu masks which partly spoke to the export of such masks to Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. I loved the section on the role of studio photography to create identity and the juxtaposition of James Barnor’s work which had been featured at the Serpentine with more contemporary work by Ruth Einika Ossai picking up similar themes. The librarian in me ...

Thought provoking  exhibition at Tate Modern examining the relationship between photography and painting in modern and contemporary art. This is a topic that fascinates me and the show introduced me to lots of new ideas. From the first quote from Susan Sontag “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses” I was hooked even though a lot of the show argued against the statement. I loved the use of quotes to plant ideas, my favourite being this David Hockney one. “A photograph is a fraction of a second, frozen. So, the moment you’ve looked at it for even four seconds you are looking at it for longer than the camera did”. The show looked at painters who use photographs and who imitate them as well as at photographers who reference paintings. It also looked at how photographs can be constructs not just paintings and how some paintings pretend to record a moment. I think my favourite room was the one on photography as painting and I recognised a number of the photographers...

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Modern comparing 20th century abstract artists Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian. This show guided you through how these artists reached their abstract ideas based on similar ideas and influences and yet they never met. I thought it was an interesting idea to bring together two artists who didn’t know each other as so many shows are about relationships. The show explained simply and well how their art developed and for the first time I understood Mondrian’s grid pictures. It was an excellent idea to have a section at the centre called The Ether which went into more depth on some of the ideas without getting in the way of the narrative and the paintings. I liked that you could enter this from two directions either quite near the start of your visit or near the end. I did it near the start but popped back in later for more explanation of Theosophy which I hadn’t really understood. I was more drawn to Mondrian’s work which seemed to be driven more by l...

Useful lecture at Tate Modern introducing the Cezanne exhibition. I’d already done the show but was going again with a friend who was upsold the exhibition ticket with added talk so I thought I’d go with it to. It was given by a gallery volunteer called Roy who said he was also an art historian. It would have been interesting to know a bit more about him. It was a nice touch that he came round saying hello to the audience as we sat waiting. I gather from what he said he’d written the talk himself and I liked the structure of outlining the events in Cezanne’s like in each decade then looking at the paintings in the show and a few extras to tell the story. He implied that the relationship with Zola might have been more than I’d read into it when I visited the show the first time so that gave me something new to think about as I then went round again. He also explained ‘constructive brushstrokes’ which led me to look more closely at the techniques used.   Selected dates until ...

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern in the life and work of Polish artist, Magdalena Abakanowicz. Anakamowicz worked in fibres and threads which developed from wall hangings through hanging sculptures to full installations. The shallow part of me felt some of them looked like monumental old cardigans hanging up but I loved the effect of them hanging together and filling a room. I liked the way the show was hung so you could walk between the work with minimal barriers as well as the way you could look out over the current Turbine Hall Installation, which has a similar approach, through a side window. Closes 21 May 2023 Reviews Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Strange but compelling installation at Tate Modern by Chilian artist Cecilia Vicuña. These are two large hangings like a mobile over child’s cot but stretching from floor to ceiling of the Turbine Hall. At first glance I’m afraid they made me think of bad macrame but they definitely benefited from reading the description and stopping to enjoy the soundscape that accompanied them. From the description I learned that a   quipu is an ancient recording and communication system used by the Quechua people of the Andes from 2500 BC through to the time of the Spanish conquest. It means knot' consisted of a long textile cord from which hung multiple strands knotted into different formations to encode as much complex information. The work includes items found by the banks of the Thames by women from local Latin American communities. It is a work which could be easily dismissed at a cursory look but it is worth pausing and spending time with it. It might have had more visual effect if ...

Calming exhibition at Tate Modern of sculpture by Czech artist Maria Bartuszov á . This was a lovely peaceful show after the buzz and colour of Cezanne. Most of the work was made of white plaster in organic shapes displayed in white rooms. A lot it was created using plaster and balloons and I heard one man reminiscing about doing the same in school with papier-mâché. I loved the works, in all sizes, which she called “Inside Eggs” which layered thin round platter moulds one inside the other. I also liked the large reliefs such as the one shown here with an embedded branch. There was an interesting room on her later public works. In 1960s and 1970s Czechoslovakia it was a requirement for a certain percentage of the budget for new developments to be spent on commissioning public at art. What a great idea! Closes 16 April 2023 Review Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Stunning exhibition at Tate Modern of work by Cezanne. Although the show was very busy, it was easy to see the works as they were fairly sparsely hung. I liked the way the first half of the show ran chronologically through Cezanne’s life weaving together his influences, friendships and his effect on later artists. The second part looked at the main themes in the works, still lives, bathers,    Mont Sainte-Victoire and portraits.    I think the still lives are my favourite. You can feel him constructing the image with paint. Having been to the studio in Aix it really comes alive. I’m not so keen on the bathers though I can see what he’s doing. It was interesting to see that they were the subject most owned by other artists. On the whole the commentaries were good but it did get a bit woke at times and I’m not sure why the show needed a   content warning at the start. A picture through branches in a forest was said to be about colonisation. Really? I loved th...