The annual Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts previewed in oppressive metropolitan heat that made the air-conditioned upstairs rooms in which the show is traditionally housed all the more appealing. As ever, there seemed to be something for all tastes and budgets, with the usual hint of incredulity hanging in the air as the various contributors – from established doyens to budding hopefuls – presented their work to the world.
This year, half the rooms are done in off-white, and the rest in different pastel shades, so most of the colour comes from the pieces themselves. The Wohl Central Hall is done in a dusty pink, which clashes loudly with a mobile of indigo drapery called poem in the dark about sadness. Its creator, Richard Malone, describes it as “a sculpture that centres gesture, personal action and queer working-class Irish and immigrant identities”.
Of course it does, and the RA has chosen it to appear on a huge banner on the front of Burlington House. Inevitably there are the usual challenges of deciphering and understanding the pieces on display – the little vade mecum exhibition guide usually helps, but not always – and there are plenty of silly I-saw-you-coming price tags. That said, there are many offerings from artists below the salt which are reasonably priced for the more impecunious collector.
The pieces, as is so often the case at this jamboree, are either all created by people who are really good artists, or by those who perhaps believe themselves to be. The confusion arises when Royal Academicians – who must surely by definition be good artists, even if their work may be inscrutable to the untrained eye – produce such bewildering material that it’s hard to understand what they were thinking when they picked up their tools.
From four room lengths away, for example, the late Dame Paula Rego RA’s Oratorio looks promisingly like a triptych; close up, it’s a deeply unnerving ensemble of papier-mâché women and children contorted into weird and uncomfortable positions. They’re flanked on the doors (because it is technically a triptych, but not one that you’d want to put behind an altar) by other figures in bizarre and unsettling situations.
In fact, visitors to this year’s show are going to have to squint pretty hard to discern any religious themes at all among the art on display – although early on, in Room II, Sir Antony Gormley RA’s Quarter unmistakably evokes a crucifix. Church architecture gets a respectable nod in the Large Weston Room, with an involved presentation about Sir Michael Hopkins RA’s new plans for the chapels of Highgate Cemetery, in north London.
At the zanier end, in the Lecture Room, are collages by Richard Wilson RA, with a word game on “worship” and “warship”. Notre-Dame in Paris appears made out of functional bits of the Bismarck, while its companion is the Bismarck made out of beautiful bits of Notre-Dame. It’s quite a fun flight of whimsy combining printouts, ink, pencil and Tipp-Ex – but they’ll still set you back £4,000 a piece. I quite fancied them, until I checked.
A few churches peek out of frames as part of the skyline, as in Anthony Whishaw RA’s textured mixed-media Near St Paul’s in Room I, or Clapham Junction by Paul Hiles, but otherwise there are slim pickings. Michael Sandle RA’s Allegory of Hope seems to be missing her companions Faith and Charity; but then I wondered why she had a breast out, looked it up, and discovered that it had been commissioned by a masonic lodge in Weymouth.
Speaking of breasts, Renata Adela’s Lilith II Bonobo Venus in the Lecture Room is mainly mammaries, and looks more than a bit like a simian version of Diana of Ephesus – who gets a cameo role in Acts 19 – except that in this case there is no doubting that they’re multiple breasts as opposed to bulls’ testicles. It’s not even the weirdest animal depiction; that prize surely goes to a prone stuffed cat in Room VI.
To be fair, there is plenty of much lovelier stuff as well. Val Wolstenholme Clay’s Devotion in Room IX has a tasteful smattering of gold leaf and evokes the washing of feet – unavoidably Christian undertones with just a frisson of sensuality.
Perhaps the nicest piece in the whole exhibition is just along another wall of the same gallery: Graham Wilcox’s Pilgrim, in grayscale oils on panel. It looks like a friar with a beatific look of radiance.
And so there is probably something for everyone, as every year, if you’re willing to put in the effort to find it. Despite my gripes, it is an exhilarating show, with some seriously solid talent on display. That said, the cat in Room VI remains a mystery: I mean, who would even think to do that?
I certainly hope that it is meant to be there, and that some poor old lady with a flat nearby isn’t still padding up and down Piccadilly, calling plaintively for Tiddles.
The Summer Exhibition is at the Royal Academy of Arts in London until 20 August.
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