I went to see Cathie Pilkington’s exhibition in the Royal Academy Schools (she is Professor of Sculpture). It turned out that it’s the last day, so this is a record of an ephemeral moment before the exhibition moves to Brighton University as part of the Brighton Festival early next month. She has colonised and adapted the Life Room by invading it with her own surreal clay and plaster figures, based on Degas’s late wax dancers, so that a room which always has elements of the macabre, including the Crucifixion of James Legge, becomes doubly or trebly surreal:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Had intended to try to get to this but time got away from me. I’m looking forward to seeing her work in response to the new Eric Gill exhibition at Ditchling. I thought the Rachel Cooke piece in last week’s Observer about ‘Eric Gill: The Body’ which mentioned Pilkington’s work was excellent
Yes, both the exhibition at Ditchling and her exhibition at Brighton open on May 5th. Charles