One-minute blog of interesting things

With everything going on in the world this exhibition in the Duveen Gallery is a much-needed example of hope in our future. As you may already know, the project, initiated by artist Steve McQueen, involved taking class photos of year 3 primary school pupils in every London borough. 1,504 schools took part (that’s 76,000 children) […]

Thanks to Tate Modern for this show, especially the revelation of Dora Maar’s later work, much of which was only discovered after her death. I was already familiar with her Surrealist photography from the 1930’s and her relationship with Picasso (including her photos of the creation of Guernica), but the most exciting part for me […]

This exhibition is all about one painting in the collection: “The Virgin of the Rocks”, giving context and background to the work. The entrance features images, reproductions of drawings nd statements from the artist’s notebooks. The text is reflected in mirrors to the side but I enjoyed the game of reading them back to front. […]

The British Museum has such a variety of treasures that I think we sometimes overlook its magnificent print and drawing collection. Pushing Paper, a selection of drawings from 1970 till now, presents just a few of the pieces from this period of time. I’m not going to write much here but the selection of images […]

The first UK show of this powerful artist’s work for about 25 years, this exhibition of Käthe Kollwitz reminds us why she was so respected during her lifetime and of her importance today. As my studio-mate raved about the prints I pushed this up to the top of my list of things to see. A […]

Now this was the part of the show that I really got my teeth into: Bridget Riley’s sketches and her working practice. It’s fascinating to see her studies with their meticulous calculations and notes.  And, just because she chose to create abstract art, it didn’t mean she couldn’t draw as these early beautiful life drawings […]

This exhibition is a pretty comprehensive retrospective of Bridget Riley’s career ranging from the “optical illusion” black and white pieces that made her name to her latest more spare work.  It was interesting to notice how differently the eye and the camera saw things: for example the overall composition of Tremor, below, is much easier […]

Having worked with this gallery before it became Fiumano Clase I’m always interested to see their shows and this recent one showing work by Nicole Wassall didn’t disappoint. The different meanings of mettle and metal are explored and the depth of Nicole’s research, combined with the technical beauty of execution produced an impressive body of […]