Jul 6

Jul 6 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023

Admiring some of the 1600 works on display at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023

Obviously everything about life changed during the pandemic. Since then, certainly for me anyway, much about the way things were has, happily, resumed. What I haven’t, yet anyway, got fully back into the swing of is going to as many exhibitions as I used to. I’m a little horrified to realise that THIS very brilliant one at The Design Museum by artist, filmmaker, architect, activist, collector and inveterate disruptor, Ai Weiwei, has been the only exhibition I’ve seen in almost a year.

Until this week.

Because I was lucky enough to be part of a group from Women of the Year (which I’m a director of), not only given private access to this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition before it opened to the public for the day, but to be guided around it by none other than the Co-Ordinator of the exhibition, the eminent artist and Academician David Remfry MBE (you can find out more about him HERE)

Artist and Royal Academician David Remfry MBE

David’s insights and behind the scenes stories of how he and the team of colleagues he invited to join him, whittled down the 16000 entries to the world’s largest open submission exhibition, to just 1600 in week - a WEEK! - and then worked out how and where to hang and display them all was absolutely fascinating.

One of the most densely hung galleries in the RA Summer Exhibition

Trying to take in as much as possible of the wildly eclectic, fabulously varied paintings, drawings, sketches, video installations, sculptures and models - each selected by David and his team for their reflection of the overarching theme Only Connect - before the galleries filled with people was a welcome reminder of why and what I’ve always loved about this annual extravaganza of art.

Trying to take in as many as possible of the pieces on display in the Summer Exhibtion

Which is, in no order of preference: the fact that there are works by amateurs alongside pieces by experienced and eminent artists, and no way of knowing which is which.

The fact that age is no barrier to entry - there’s a trio of paintings by a 103 year old artist in this year’s show.

The fact that quirkiness and humour is celebrated side by side with darker themes and challenging creations.

Don’t slip in these sculpted shoes. The plug below is also an exhibit!

The fact that almost all the pieces on display are for sale. And that it’s even possible to actually afford some of them. (The orange sticker on the number display shows the piece has been purchased.)

The fact that you’re bound to see plenty you’ll love, but also to have your artistic taste and inclinations challenged and broadened. This year, for instance, whilst it’s really not possible to have a favourite, the space that probably made the biggest impression on me was the architecture gallery.

The architecture gallery at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Not just because of that giant wooden crane-like sculpture that dominates the room called The Tree and the Truss and made by students of the Architectural Association, but because - and I do realise this almost certainly has a good deal to do with my time painstakingly creating scale models of my designs as part of my stage design A Level - of a particular model of a design for four mews houses (see below)

Model of an intricately and cleverly designed mews house development in this year’s Summer Exhibition

For me, the special fascination and brilliance of this as a piece of design is how the four houses are are positioned in what is a very constrained plot, in such a way that none of the windows of any one house looks directly into the windows of another. (It’s hard to see without actually walking around the model but take my word for it, it’s an astonishing piece of design)

I entirely accept that might not rock your boat at all, and that any of the other 1600 pieces - or as many of them as you manage to see when there’s so much competing for your attention - would be the one, or ones, that lodge themselves in your memory. And, of course, that’d be exactly the point of the exhibition. There’s something for everyone in it.

One you certainly won’t miss is the vast fabric-draped mobile hung in the centre of in the circular Wohl Central hall (and with one of the longest titles in the show - see below)

poem in the dark about sadness, filiocht faoi bhron as an dorchadas

David explained that he had commissioned it specially for the exhibition and the space and that it’s the first ever sculpture piece by Richard Malone, a fashion designer whose work David saw in a show and was immediately convinced could create the impactful centrepiece he was looking for. Hard not to agree that’s exactly what Richard has done.

Critics criticise the Summer Exhibition for the variation in quality of the works on display, and the sometimes seemingly unfocused nature of the selection and displays of the chosen pieces. But as someone who’s about as far removed from an expert as it’s possible to be, for me the diversity of the works, and the celebration of their creation that the exhibition is always infused with, make it one that I’m truly happy to have been reminded to reinstate to my must-see agenda.