Feature: Exhibition - Review - ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER SHOW 2010

Published: 24 June 2010
by GERALD ISAAMAN

ROLL up, roll up, roll up. The Royal Academy today is like a fairground, full fun and fluff, colour and confusion, plus mad March hares, outrageous graffiti and a snarling King Kong gorilla made out of countless coat-hangers.

That should give you the flavour of this year’s summer show, which provides the delight, as you walk under the arch from Piccadilly, of giant hares created by the late Barry Flanagan, once of Kentish Town, putting a real bounce into your step.

But, alas, the carnival – this is the 242nd year of the world’s largest open exhibition of its kind – is a scrapbook of art with little of quality and integrity that stamps any acceptable authority on the show.

And the more so when you consider the work of some Royal Academicians, notably Tracey Emin, whose graffiti doodles leave you all the more shocked when the catalogue says they are priced at £125,000, packaging free no doubt.

Perhaps the reason why is that the overall theme of the show is RAW, whether tongue in cheek or otherwise. Yet that fails to explain why Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the admired architect and the RA’s current president, can declare: “She draws and paints beautifully, in an extraordinary kind of way, if you really look. To some people her works look throwaway – but there’s a huge amount of care and effort in it.”

Alas, you don’t need to go to SpecSavers to disagree violently, and as you watch visitors standing puzzled and bewildered before some of the exhibits you have to wonder whether we need to invent a new collective description for works that insult the very word art and more resemble nightmare daubs.

Certainly some major works demand your attention, if nothing else. Silver Streak, the massive gorilla of newly elected RA David Mach, which collects a crowd of admirers around it, is an ingenious piece of invention from an artist known for his performance art.

If you want to plant it at the entrance of the House of Commons to deter fraudulent expenses claims or put it on your back lawn to haunt the neighbours, then it will cost you £265,000.

The same can be said for the smashed-up vintage car with decapitated driver by Yinka Shonibare, fortunately not for sale, which adds to the feeling that this is a fairground of fun surely not meant to be taken too seriously.

All is not lost. There are some old faithfuls, in particular tribute displays to the late Hampstead artists John Craxton and Michael Kidner, as well as offerings from Hampstead’s octogenarian sculptor Sir Anthony Caro plus a foaming seascape by his admirable artist wife, Sheila Girling.

Tess Jaray RA, from Camden Town, maintains her excellence with subtle blue, pink and green decorative designs while Allen Jones RA exploits in bright colours of the TV craze for dance shows.

Figurative art has taken a permanent backseat these days at the summer show. The finest example comes from abroad, Einschusse, an inspiring mountain scene by Anselm Kiefer, and the thankful charm of Anthony Green, late of Highgate.

Philip Sutton’s Scented Breeze is overwhelming, Martin Maloney depicts the world of showbusiness with his triple-headed, triple breasted International Superstar and Gary Hume defines Bikini with a beautiful pink screenprint.

Too many of the galleries, unfortunately, are seemingly packed with the detritus of a consumer age which is engulfed by inbuilt obsolescence and therefore values little. So the best place to escape, as always, is the architectural galleries, the more so as their more architect working and living in Camden and Islington than probably anywhere on earth.

Here you will find the challenge and wonder of tomorrow’s world from the likes of Sir Michael Hopkins, Zaha Hadid, Lords Rogers and Foster. New hotels seem to be the fashion, Rogers giving us a single skyscraper in Sydney and Foster’s work including a four-tower study for a striking new hotel in Mumbai that truly reaches for the stars.

More modest is Adrian Friend’s King’s Cross Corona, a new round house for the area, and the Casa-Movil Project of Burd Haward, which is a Douglas fir timber eco house of the future,  the model made out of recycled card, slate and pebbles.

That, happily, brings the show down to earth, though whether anything will be built in today’s economic famine is a worry that has to extend to any art – good and bad – to be placed on its walls.

• The Summer Exhibition runs at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1, until August 22, 10am-6pm
(Fridays until 10pm). Admission £8, www. royalacademy.org.uk