So…a set of enormous chains hanging from the ceiling interspersed with what look like crowns of ostrich feather dusters, black to set off a room of black works, then a bigger room where what looks like specimens from an abbatoir hang from the ceiling (yep, shades of Damian Hurst)…welcome to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Back in 2010 there were 1,140 exhibits; this year it’s over 1700…are we to assume there’s been an inflation in the sheer painterly brilliance and sculptural skills of the nation? Well, no. The impression here from the selection by architect Farshid Moussavi and her committee, is not that there is a superabundance of genius to accommodate but that there are so many disparate elements in contemporary art that you might as well get in as many as possible.
And so we get a selection from the hackneyed (I think the gag of an entirely black canvas has been done, quite a long time ago) to the monumental (an extra large fishing net, bronzed, anyone?) to the twee (a dinky little cactus with a shocked face really could be sold unblushingly by a seaside gift shop). There are a number of attractive, accomplished and interesting – though few beautiful – pieces throughout, but after taking on this number of works you come away spent, but still quite unsure of what contemporary British art is about and where it’s going.
If you were, in fact, to be accosted outside the show by a stranger demanding to know what are the dominant elements of the art scene these days, I think you’d struggle to say. Representational art is still with us, portraiture... yep, up to a point, sculpture… don’t ask, print works still holding their own, abstraction … of course, some of which make a lot of noise by just being highly coloured (I liked the semi-figurative abstraction of Netta Carey’s bold, simple, The Return and John Maine’s Swirl – a juxtaposition of pastels).
Nature studies, some highly detailed, are a thing; a tribute to our vanishing biodiversity. Lots of animals feature, chiefly cat and dog studies but including a cute collection of taxidermised rodents, or, more precisely, 101 rat pelts, gilded on the inside with 24 carat gold, and a snip at £85,000.
Textiles, yes, I’m afraid, and if if you want a takeaway that you actually can make at home, how about customising a T-shirt with blue ink to say The Most Important People are Labourers – your version will be just as good as the RA’s.
Religious art, the most fundamental genre, is pretty well absent other than – whaddya know? - a big, sketchy but oddly moving crucifixion by Tracey Emin and an intriguing allusive version of Jacob’s Ladder by Anselm Kiefer. Obviously, there’s a fun Grayson Perry pot. And there are some other instantly identifiable elements: Quentin Blake, in sombre mood, with a series of melancholic old faces.
There are references to the art of the past but chiefly in an annoying way. That is, by doctoring reproductions with contemporary touches – a biscuit packet hat on an eighteenth century portrait of a lady (why?) or a reproduction of those famous portraits featuring black servants, only with the servant highlighted, or a picture of detail from a Gilray cartoon blown up. But there’s some pleasing retrospection; Sue A’Court’s Wilderness, a rococo take on a romantic landscape, say, or a Mughal-style lady on an elephant in the original style. The funniest is a modern take on a Breughel snowy landscape, only with litter and snowmen.
This being the RA there’s a fair amount of overtly political work, much of it in the room curated by Vanessa Jackson and Sikelela Owen. Here we find a cushion with devotional pictures of Malala and the pixie from Sweden, rather a good linocut of migrants in a dinghy, an actual altar to Adjoa Andoh and a heart saying We Have only Got Each Other. There’s still quite a lot of that about…slogans doing service for art. Bit cheap, no?
Given the sheer quantity of art and artefacts, it seems odd that a couple of rooms are left with quite half the upper part of the wall empty. We’re probably meant to make something of that, but God knows what.
