Cathy's Art Diary

Eclectic exhibition at various venues around the city of Liverpool of contemporary art taking inspiration from the bedrock of the city. OK I admit I am slightly cheating on this one! I was in the city for a Springsteen concert and left on the day before the show opened however I saw a couple of previews and some of the works which had already gone up in the streets so I am allowing myself to blog it! My first find was a sculpture by Anna Gonzalez-Noguchi outside the Open Eye Gallery referencing exotic plants which were imported into the city. I loved their tactile element with pieces which turned and dangled. At the Walker Art Gallery I loved Isabel Nolan's wall carpets in bright colours but my favourite pieces were Cevdet Erek's models of football stadium shown like picture frames. As I'd been at Anfield the night before and am fascinated by frames this pushed my buttons. I also liked Leasho Johnson's dense colourful paintings. Thanks to a chat to a gallery as...

Fun exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery looking at the work of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. There were just two display cases but they featured a good cross section from her collections over the years including a suit worn by Holly Johnson. As they were at the end of the design gallery the display was quite cramped and it was hard to step back and look at the outfits or to read the labels. Closes 17 October 2025

Strange but beautiful exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery marking Graham Crowley winning the John Moores Painting Prize in 2023. Crowley had entered the prize 16 times over the years and had been shortlisted twice as well as being a juror. He won in 2023 and part of the prize was to have this display which was focused on his painting "Light Industry" which the gallery bought in 2021. All the works were in cadmium yellow and grey and yet they were amazingly detailed. They all showed his workshops, studios and gardens, all areas of creativity for him. They were slightly dazzling en mass but I loved the effect. He is in essence painting the light and shadow of the place. Closed 13 July 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery bringing together ceramics by the comedian Johnny Vegas and ceramicist Emma Rodgers. Vegas did a degree in art and ceramics and has returned to the studio three decades after he graduated. Having met Rodgers at the gallery their joint show explores ideas of mental and physical metamorphosis. I loved Vegas's piece "Broken Angel" in which an angel cradles her broken wing. I would like to know more about his method as this appeared to be a 3D print. I'm not sure why I feel differently about this than say a bronze which is also a reproduction of another piece. Rodgers work shows more of the hand of the maker. Closed 27 June 2025

Fascinating exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery of art works made since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 which help to tell the recent history of the LGBT+ community. The show was a bit wordy in places and took great pains to define various terms. I felt the art works, with good commentaries, could have told this story without too many general explanations. At times it didn’t seem to be sure whether it was just trying to inform and tell a story or educate. There were over 60 works in the show and included some revelations to me and I thought I knew gay/contemporary art quite well! I hadn’t seen paintings by Derek Jarman before and there was a landscape and a work called Morphine, painted over tabloid covers which were outing a young actor. It was a nice touch to hang this by Richard Hamilton’s portrait of Jarman. I liked Stewart Home’s work superimposing his own figure over those of models and his own mother to create a fluid image. Also Matt Sm...

Interesting exhibition at the Walker Art in Liverpool of work by contemporary artist Lubaina Himid. The core of the show was a selection of work made by Himid of work by women from the Walker Gallery’s own collections which used a sculpture of Henry Longfellow by Edmonia Lewis as the starting point. The selection included work by Nina Hamnett, Prunella Clough and Tacita Dean. These sculptures were shown with Himid’s watercolour series “Scenes from the Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture”. Toussaint was a Haitian leader of the only successful slave uprising in the Caribbean. The pictures were delightful and read like a cartoon strip. Best though was a wonderful series of colourful, life-sized cut-out figures which were scattered around the gallery which were part of an installation called “Naming the Money” which show examine how European’s showed their wealth and power by using African’s as slaves. They were placed to open up a conversation with the art around them and to m...

Delightful exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool looking at the life and work of Aphonse Mucha the illustrator and artist. These works are so over the top Art Nouveau that it is easy to forget that Mucha was a pioneer and inspirer of the style not the clichéd follower we tend to view his as now. I loved the section looking at his early work designing posters for Sarah Bernardt which became so famous they were stolen from hoardings. I liked the rather Norse poster for Hamlet. There was also a good section on his advertising work with lovely examples of packaging and posters. He was a pioneer of brand recognition through his work with the biscuit maker Lefvre-Utile creating biscuit tins, labels and boxes. The show stresses that he was an egalitarian artist as his work was see by everyone in the streets so it had a wide influence. The show looked at Mucha’s influence across with a heavy emphasis on the local Della Robbia Pottery Company based in Birkenhead. I...

Interesting exhibition at the Walker Gallery for this painting competition which is held every two years and aims to reflect the best of contemporary art. As with most competitions there were some nice works and some not so good. I’ll admit I didn’t really understand the winner “PV windows and floorboards” by Rose Wylie and could feel the words “A child could have done it” starting to appear in my head but I am sure there is something I missed. My favourites were inevitably the ones with a subject such as David Dawson’s “18.45 April 7th 2011” a picture of 1930s houses in a street done in thick impasto paint or “Tony Noble’s “Small houses and big tress”. I fell in love with Frank Pudney’s “People 68104” which had thousands of tiny people grouped together to make up a Chinese style picture. It had a feeling of Anthony Gromley’s “Fields” or as I call them, with great fondness, the little people. The most novel work was one by Conor Niall Rogers painted on a crisp pa...

Interesting exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery of photographs by Catherine Opie of her friends in the gays and trans community. There were some beautiful images such as one entitled “James 1993” but I wanted to be shown happy liberated people at home in their skins and I hoped that was the point but in fact I felt I was seeing quite sad images in some cases. The show played with sterotypes yet in doing so seemed to create new ones.

Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery of work by Tabitha Moses looking at IVF treatment. The work consisted of hospital gowns embroidered with pictures representing particular women’s experience of IVF treatment. These were shown with photographs of three of the women in their gowns in hospital by Jon Barraclough. I found the images in the gowns were beautifully made and a bit Grayson Perry like but I didn’t engage with the images of syringes and fallopian tubes.  

Small display at the Walker Art Gallery looking at the First World War practice of painting ships in brightly coloured asymmetric patterns to create an optical illusion which obscured the speed and direction of the ships. I find it fascinating that this effect was invented by the artist Norman Wilkinson and undertaken by Edward Wadsworth, an intelligence office for the Royal Naval Reserve and a Vorticist. I think this is the only good use I’ve seen for Vorticisim! The display just consisted of a good commentary and four woodcuts by Wadsworth. I would love to have seen more, although I did see the Dazzle ship at the Albert Dock and I go past the one in London everyday on the boat! The woodcuts were in Vorticist style and did give some idea of how the camouflage would have worked as in them the boats blended into their backgrounds.

Video installation at the Walker Art Gallery as part of the Liverpool Biennial by Michael Nyman, the composer. The installation features a new piece of music by him and film from his 20 years living in Mexico. What I saw of it was quite enthralling and included an interesting sequence on the two video screen of different photographer, a professional and a street photographer. However the whole thing was very long and I was not sure I wanted to give that much time to a work in an art gallery. The Codex Fejervary-Mayer, a Mexican codex from the World Museum down the road, which had been the inspiration for the piece, was shown in the same room as the installation.

Exhibition for this contemporary art prize held about every two years at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. I must admit I didn’t have long to do it and skimmed but some images still leapt out at the me. I think my favourite was “Special Relativity” by Julian Brian which showed a rearranged front room with the pair of ceramic dogs taking the place of the chairs on either side of the fireplace. Alongside was a related display of past winners including David Hockney and Peter Blake. Review Liverpool Echo

Excellent exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool showing this series of detailed city panorama’s by Ben Johnson. In particular it focused on a new panorama of Liverpool from the waterfront commission for the European Year of Culture. It shows both existing and planned buildings in exquisite detail and it was lovely to see local people enjoying it and pointing out where they lived and worked to friends. I had a great conversation with the lady next to me talking about what the new buildings were as it is 23 years since I lived in the city. A super video showed you how the picture was created and a computer simulation took you through how it grew and let you focus in on particular features. In the next room there was a sequence of older panoramas of the city to compare to the new vision. It had a real sense of being a work of art created for a city. Reviews Independent Liverpool Echo