The Royal Academy’s first Summer Exhibition opened in 1769. That was the same year that Captain James Cook began his first voyage to the Pacific. In other words, this open-submission exhibition has been around for a very long time. This year, British sculptor Ryan Gander is at the helm, working under the broad curatorial theme of ‘Interconnectness’. Which is just as well, given there are nearly 2,000 works that he’s chosen to fill the galleries of the London institution.
The result is that there really is something here for everyone. Paintings, sculptures, paintings of sculptures, and sculptures of paintings, such as Mark Alexander’s Mother and Child rendered in quartz sand. There are woodcuts of birds by Tom Hammick, and etchings camping under a starry sky by Heidrun Rathgeb. Some prints revel in solitude like the beautiful work of Lene Bladbjerg, while others, such as Karen Keogh’s views of a French village, are rendered with a level of detail that rivals a photograph – not that this exhibition is short of those either.
Elsewhere, Paul Tecklenberg transforms discarded nitrous oxide canisters into a basketball hoop, while Joseph Grigely has constructed a leaning tower of wine-bottle capsules, almost ten metres high, from the foil found around the necks of bottles. It is the sort of exhibition where almost any material, subject, or idea can find a place.
Those looking for some art world bigwigs will find paintings by Frank Bowling, Gary Humes, Anselm Kiefer, and a beautiful black and white print by Cornelia Parker. The comedians are out in force too. Harry Hill has two paintings of a car set on fire, while Joe Lycett returns with a rather unflattering painting of Cilla Black. Although, compared to some of the animal sculptures I saw on display, Cilla gets off lightly. Annie Whiles exhibits a sculpture that appears part rabbit, part dog and part rabid dog. Nearby, Laura Ford’s bronze fox lies sprawled across the floor, legs akimbo, in a pose unlikely to rehabilitate its public image.
If you like pocket-sized things, make a beeline for the small sculpture shelf running along the third of Ryan Gander’s galleries, one of the exhibition’s real delights. There is a carrara marble coffee cup by Chris Mitton, interlinked Polo mints by Christopher Madden, and a ship in a (plastic, cider) bottle by Dion Kitson. And if you like affordable things, there are a few of those too. Alison Sterling’s painting of a cigarette on a canvas the size of a matchbox, for example, costs less than an annual Royal Academy membership. Of course, not everything here can say the same. Joe Lycett priced his 2018 submission of a bust made from clay and a Pringles tube for £12.5 million. Sadly, nobody this year has shown quite the same confidence. The highest published price is a Sean Scully oil on copper at a comparatively modest £373,000.
If you found all that information overwhelming, that’s because this exhibition is. The Summer Exhibition rewards patience, not efficiency. Don’t book the 5pm slot; you’ll only end up having to return the following weekend. Give yourself time to wander as if you do, somewhere among the thousands of works you may discover your new favourite artist.
