This week, the 255th Summer Exhibition opens at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
Only Connect, taken from the novel Howards End by E.M. Forster, is the theme for this year’s exhibition which has been co-ordinated by David Remfry RA.
The RA’s Summer Exhibition is a unique celebration of contemporary art and architecture, providing a vital platform and support for artists at all stages of their career. Artists exhibiting new work this year include British artist Lindsey Mendick, who has created three playful ceramic works, and Barbados born painter Paul Dash, who shows compositions that bridge figuration and abstraction.
Other artists invited to exhibit this year include Royal Academy Schools graduates Jenkin van Zyl and Harminder Judge, American multi-media artist Ida Applebroog, St Lucia born painter Winston Branch, Colombian sculptor Carlos Zapata and British painters Caragh Thuring and Caroline Walker.
A dramatic mobile installation by Irish fashion designer Richard Malone hangs theatrically in the Central Hall, traversing the line between fashion and sculpture. In addition to the large number of public submissions, the exhibition features work by Royal Academicians including Frank Bowling, Michael Craig-Martin, Tracey Emin, Gillian Wearing and the late Paula Rego, as well as Honorary Royal Academicians Mimmo Paladino, Pipilotti Rist and Kiki Smith. Newly elected Royal Academicians Roger Hiorns, Hew Locke, Veronica Ryan and Barbara Walker have submitted works, as well as newly elected Honorary Royal Academician Kara Walker.
This year’s Architecture Room, curated by Peter Barber RA, focuses on the process of construction and making, showing work that is analogue, crafted and handmade. Two works by the late Phyllida Barlow RA form the centrepiece of the gallery and Turner prize-winning collective Assemble, exhibiting for the first time as Royal Academicians, are showing prototypes of the ceramic tiles used in their 2017 Art on the Underground project at Seven Sisters station.
The Summer Exhibition has been held every year without interruption since 1769 and continues to play a significant part in raising funds to finance the students of the RA Schools. The RA Schools is the longest established art school in the UK and offers the only free three-year postgraduate programme in Europe.
As the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show, the Summer Exhibition provides a unique platform for emerging and established artists to showcase their works to an international audience, comprising a range of media from painting and printmaking to photography, sculpture, architecture and film.
The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition opens on 13 June (until 20 August). For further information: royalacademy.org.uk
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Image: Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2023 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, 13 June – 20 August 2023. Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry.