Cathy's Art Diary

The latest public sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square by Katharina Fritsch.   I am not too sure what its saying and have read the reviews which talk about it being a masculine statement about French pride in a square which commemorates a French defeat. I just know I like it! I wasn’t sure about it in the exhibition which showed the contenders but as with the boy on the rocking horse I was wrong. Once produced on this enormous scale and when you see the detail and almost feel the colour it is wonderful!   I saw in on a lovely sunny day with the blue zinging off a blue shy but look forward to seeing how it works on darker days.   Only the British though could erect a big innuendo in one of its main squares! Reviews Guardian Telegraph  

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on the role of plots in 17th century England and how they were publicised via prints. James I had a great suspicion of plots as his father, Darnley, had died as a result of one and his mother’s execution came from her involvement in plot against Elizabeth I. However it also seems from this exhibitor that he was right to be wary! The exhibition started with the Gunpowder Plot and went through the Titus Oates affair and the Rye House Plot. It also looked at the great sexual scandal of the time the Overbury Affair. This was a fascinating look at this period of history which I must admit is a little hazy for me!

Nice display at the National Portrait Gallery comparing portraits of 16th century Queens with their tomb effigies. The exhibition looked at Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and compliments the “The White Queen” which in on TV at the moment. Both the Beaufort and York effigies were by Pietro Torrigiano and had beautiful hands.

Stunning exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by Dame Laura Knight. The exhibition included some wonderful pictures but also gave a good overview of how she worked and her immersion approach of spending months with her sitters who often seemed to become good friends. It also showed the balance between her commissioned work and the work she did for herself and to peruse a subject. I liked the arrangement of the exhibition into sections of her immersion work such as ballet and theatre, gypsies, circus and the war years. The section on her time in America when she painted black patients from the segregated wards of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore was fascinating My favourite though had to be the pictures from World War II when she was a war artist. She developed a smooth style which could be reproduced well as she knew it was important for the images to be circulated. The exhibition also gave a good view of her as a person and was as much about her as ...

Fabulous exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork looking at Irish artists who went to France to study modern art and explored Cubism. These were lovely pictures which were hard to focus on when you first went in because you could always see another great picture coming up but most interesting was that the majority of the Irish works were by women. I particularly fell for the work of Mary Swanzy who inherited a family fortune and had travelled widely looking at all the new isms in Europe (Vorticism in England, Furuturism in Italy etc) and also went to Hawaii and Samoa but ended up settling down just up the road from me in Blackheath! Her work was so vibrant and full of colour and life. I was also fascinated by Mainie Jellet and Evie Hone who had worked on religious subjects in a cubist form. I felt in an exhibition I had fallen upon a new world and group of people I knew nothing about and I want to find out more!

Exhibition of works in progress at Limerick City Art Gallery by Felicity Clear, Anita Groener, Pamela Dunne and the School of Architecture in the University of Limerick (SAUL). The idea was that the works would develop during the course of the exhibition and some of them would be destroyed at the end. I must admit nothing has stuck with me from this exhibition except a wall of digital maps and info graphics. The other works just didn’t impinge. Maybe they needed to develop a bit more!

Interesting exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art which commission 14 artists from around the city to respond to a work of their choice in the National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland. On the whole the original self-portraits came across as more interesting than the responses for example Robert Ballagh’s picture realistic picture showing himself moles and all or Vera Klute’s picture of herself in a stripped jumper with an electric switch. However some of the responses were lovely particularly Anne Maire Morrin’s “Cradle to Cradle” which was a set of hanging bells but shaped as little dresses. Really beautiful.