Have a Ball at the RA’s Summer Exhibition
The annual artistic extravaganza returns to draw the crowds to the Royal Academy for a mixed bag of works
Over the past three terms, I’ve made a habit of sitting on the fence when it comes to reviewing. I’ve never known quite why we don’t include ratings in the Arts section, but I suspect it might be due to the fact that it would just be a constant stream of three star reviews. Having said this, I wouldn’t give the RA Summer Exhibition three stars. Well, at least some bits of it. Christ, other bits I wouldn’t even care to deign with attention. This, dear reader, is the Summer Exhibition dilemma.
I struggle to think of anything, like, anything at all, that changes and renews itself on a regular basis and yet consistently succeeds in making the grade as the Summer Exhibition does. Take its distant cousin, the Summer Ball – 2010 offered Tinie Tempah, 2011 brought with it Ian Brown. The decline is so steep that one could easily be lead into thinking that the Beatles had reformed just to play in 2009. Any DPFS could learn a thing or two from the annual exhibition of the work of the students of the Royal Academy.
Like I said before, the exhibition isn’t wall-to-wall stunners. Anthony Green’s small crop of postcard, pastoral scenes appeared to be painted on the theme of Beryl Cook with a headache. Surrounded by chocolate boxey oil paintings, the collection had echoes of Labrinth grinding out a set in the rain with everybody else, ironically in retrospect, waiting for him to play “Let the Sun Shine”. The nature of the Exhibition is that the vast majority of pieces are for sale, and despite the fact that I doubt many semi-blind cave dwellers visit the exhibition on the hunt for a painting of an old man and a dog decorating a nude woman in a field, I suspect someone will buy it. Possibly along with a copy of Stooshe’s new single, the tender love ballad ‘Fuck Me.’
Just as one man’s Chase and Status is another man’s Chew Lips, it’s not hard to stroll, nose aloft, past into the more edgy corners of the Exhibition and find something to one’s taste. Early on in the exhibition, one encounters Keith Tyson’s Deep Impact. A huge piece, eight metres square, depicting a maelstrom of swirling, foreboding darkness, topped of with a name that sounds like a low-grade porn film. It washes the beholder in a charging anger that with every glance throws up before unnoticed details, all contained in a smooth, almost cold slab. A feat of practical creation as much as conceptual, the skill in its crafting is belied as the guide lists it as being made of ‘mixed media’.
Different rooms are given over to different curators, each of whom bring unique flavours to each room. Prints this year have a greater presence, afforded more walls in the exhibition and not as crammed as has been the case in bygone years and water colours are making an unwelcome resurgence, death by pastel colours is apparently in vogue. Head and shoulders above the rest stands Michael Sandle’s collection on the horrors of war. The pieces are displayed with a strange air of memorabilia to them and mix silent, portentous sculpture with pieces made of scatty splinters of emotion. Tim Shaw’s sculpture of a man in flames, running, stands as a poignant testament to the horrors of war, with the painful directness that the more solemn pieces lack.
