Who? people said to me when I mentioned this show at the National Gallery.

A 17th century Spanish artist, Francisco de Zurbarán worked during the Counter-Reformation. His patrons were religious orders intent on reinforcing the power and influence of the Catholic church throughout the Spanish Empire.

I don’t know if he was very religious but the paintings exude faith and devotion to God. Wonder and beauty are two words that spring to my mind when looking at his work.

See how lovingly he paints the fabric in this portrait of Saint Serapion.

Saint Francis’ shadowed face gazes up to heaven, his mouth open in rapture.

Devotion is evident in this crucifixion too though our focus went straight to the billowing loincloth: his painting of fabric is a joy to behold.

This colossal head has recently been attributed to Zurbarán. It’s rare for something of this scale on canvas to survive and no-one knows why it was painted.

It’s difficult to imagine how this vast alterpiece (about 15 metres high) would have looked in its original setting. The entire thing was dismantled in the early 19th century so the diagram below imagines what it might have been.

The three panels on show are reunited for the first time in almost 175 years, with the central one about 3 metres high.

We had a bit of trouble with the piles of disembodied cherub heads but maybe that’s a Spanish Counter-Reformation thing?

There’s so much more that another post will follow.

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This show of photographs by Max Alexander took place during the recent Artemis space expedition in the courtyard of Burlington House, home of the Royal Astonomical Society

The first two photos here are of satellite trajectories giving an indication of the amount of space traffic above our heads. We are putting an increasing number or satellites in space for research, communication and surveillance with the resulting debris a growing and very serious problem.

British astronaut Tim Peake took this photo of an impact crack in the window of the cupola module on the International Space Station during his time there in 2016. Imagine what would have happened if the window had broken.

The photo below is of a test target showing the effect that a plastic object of 3mm across has on metal in orbit. That’s hypervelocity, a speed of 1 to 7.5km per second to you and me.

Donald J Kessler pioneered the study of space debris. He proposed back in 1978 that debris, left unchecked, could cause a chain reaction of satellite collisions, dubbed “The Kessler Syndrome“.

Since then various companies have searched for solutions, many of which involve encircling the debris before carrying it down to the atmosphere to burn up.

ClearSpace SA have developed a machine to capture or “hug” debris.

Zoe Tenacci & Rosie Linehan of Astroscale Ltd. demonstrate how debris could be clasped by another satellite.

I like the poetry of retrieval through the action of hugging.

All photos are by Max Alexander unless otherwise stated.

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Michaelina Wautier was a successful artist during her lifetime (1614 – 1689) but subsequently unknown until very recently. This exhibition at the Royal Academy is the celebration of a talent that deserves to be better known to the public.

Previously ignored due to male art historians unable to conceive that a woman could paint to such a standard, much of her work was mis-attributed to her brother, Charles, with whom she lived and worked.

Here is an early drawing, the only one known to survive, a copy of a classical sculpture. Drawing sculpture was the final part of training for any serious artist before working from the live figure.

Most of Wautier’s known work is included in this exhibition and covers many genres: portraiture, still life, religious and mythological showing her versatility.

She painted children with a sensitivity unmatched by her male peers.

She captured their personalities even in depictions of the senses.

Is this the only example of the stench of a rotten egg in painting?

The Triumph of Bacchus shows her mastery of the male nude at all ages in this mythological scene. It was apparently once described as being too bold to have been painted by a woman.

The woman looking out at the viewer is a self-portrait of her face: yes, I am bold and this is mine.

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The British Museum‘s Samurai exhibiton was understandably hugely popular. We’re all familiar with images of samurai armour but one of the things I appreciated about the show was learning about other aspects of this warrior class.

I wanted to share here a small part of the show: the spear cover standards used to identify different clans. Weapons were covered when in processions and each clan had its own symbolism in covers as well as standards.

This procession is depicted in 1863 in a wood block print by Utagawa Hiroshige II.

Warrior directories (Bukan) were illustrated identification guides giving background information to onlookers.

The majority of soldiers marched on foot, their hats marked with identifying symbols.

We were impressed by the fact that most exhibits on display were from the British Museum’s own collection.

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This retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery covers five decades of Veronica Ryan‘s career, from the 1980s to 2026 including new works specially commissioned for the show.

I’ve focussed here on her use of seed pods and fruit as the theme runs throughout her career (see the drawing above from 1983). They represent growth and possibility, decay and death as well as movement through trade and migration. Multiple conversations indeed.

You may remember a blog post from several years ago where I featured her installation commemorating the Windrush generation. The sculptures are of fruit familiar to those who travelled across the ocean from the Caribbean to the UK.

Ceramic cocoa pods, coloured like sweets, laid on a jute mat with one escaping or adrift.

In this piece below, soursop fruit pods made of silicone, sink into a marble slab laid on a lead mat. I found it very moving, as if these were offerings on a tomb.

I read the text (I look first then read) that a quoit is a Welsh funerary stone structure. The sculpture was made soon after the devastating volcanic eruption on Monserrat which destroyed much of the island, including Ryan’s birthplace Plymouth.

In “Inside Out, Outside In”, lead-wrapped seed shapes lay on a lead pod with upturned edges, three spaces empty…

The wrapped shapes also reminded me of crushed and discarded ballet shoes. Preservation, commemoration, grief, loss with hope and the potential of coming life.

The exhibition is on until 14th June.

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I was passing close by (it’s on Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square) so popped in to see what was on. This is what I found: Icheon and Beyond: The Space Within Form.

Laozi’s quote from the 4th century BCE that “We shape clay into a vessel, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want” is worth reflecting on.

The boundary between inside and outside is permeable in this soft-looking filigree piece by Mimi Joung

Youngsoo Kim is a Master Ceramic Artist exploring the use of doublework open carving, a fiendishly difficult technique.

The exhibition runs until 5th June and is free to visit.

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The HENI project space is just to the right when you enter the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. I’d only ever seen a security guard standing there and had no idea that it was a third (and free) space till I stepped inside.

I found The Blue Road, an exhibition of photographs by Samuel Laurence Cunnane.

Here are a few images taken with my camera, a selection of his work over the past ten years.

The photos give us luminous meditations of transient scenes, the quiet beauty of often overlooked places. They quite captivated me with their painterly quality transforming something prosaic into wonder. The ground of a building site above reminds me of Richard Long‘s work, both involving mud.

An underpass becomes heavenly… neighbouring buildings, one under a construction safety mesh, meld together.

There’s a deep pleasure to be found in looking and seeing.

My first glance was to see incense stumps from a Buddhist temple – more poetic than the reality but I enjoyed the way my mind was able to make associations from what is a very mundane thing.

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Threads of Life by Chiharu Shiota is another exhibition at the Hayward Gallery using textiles, this time thread and is a definite crowd pleaser – very Instagrammable.

The first installation, Threads of Life, is an amorphous red web with 20,000 suspended keys and a pair of open wooden doors in the centre, beckoning you to walk through them.

Letters of Thanks is just what it says: letters written to express gratitude suspended in a maze of red thread.

More letters are added at each reimagining, with some from London. It is a simple yet very sweet concept and I enjoyed the impression of weightlessness as I walked through.

During Sleep has black thread surrounding single beds as in a dormitory. Shiota moved 9 times in the first 3 years of living in Germany and would sometimes wake up not knowing where she was. Making a cocoon of yarn apparently gave her comfort.

Her work can be appreciated simply for its visual appeal which it often is. Look at the shadows thrown onto rumpled bedding for example.

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Heart to Heart by Yin Xiuzhen is currently on at the Hayward Gallery, part of London’s South Bank Centre. I was interested to see it as I have myself experienced the rapid urban development in the artist’s homeland, China.

This installation of an airport luggage carousel greets you on entry with models of different cities made from textiles sitting in suitcases. The carousel itself is covered in garments, the whole overshadowed by a fabric jet.

The artist uses pre-worn clothing as her medium: what we wear, the skin over our skin, reflecting too on globalisation throughout the garment industry.

I admired the making, the process and dedication to creating these pieces. They reminded me of the paper models made to burn at funerals, items that people would need in the afterlife. It almost felt like an act of collective grieving after an accident.

Collective Subconscious (Blue), a minibus affectionately known in Beijing as “a little loaf of bread“, has been extended into a caterpiller-like vehicle using over 400 pieces of used clothing. There’s a cosiness to it, like the Catbus in My Neighbour Totoro.

A recording of a popular song, Beijing, Beijing plays inside evoking a period of idealism in the 1990s. The original idea was that people could sit inside and reflect on the changes that have taken place over intervening years.

There is plenty more to see, most of which left me with an overwhelming impression of melancholy, of looking back to the past.

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Another work that impressed me in The Long Now at Saatchi Gallery was Aftermaths by Matt Collishaw.

The imagining of a dystopian underwater world, the result of unintended consequences of our actions: environmental pollution, overconsumption, AI, genetic engineering…

Strange creatures have evolved, mutants of existing forms escaped from labs or developed in response to pollutants and living amongst defunct technology now submerged by rising sea levels.

It’s creepily beautiful and compelling to watch.

You can also watch it online here.

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