The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2008
Saturday morning I attended the Friends and Members preview of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and was faced with my annual choice between spending £12 on two glasses of Pimms or going whole hog, spending £18 on a jug and getting sloshed.
The Summer Exhibition is something I always approach with some trepidation as it can get quite overwhelming. With two or three galleries crammed full of paintings and people it is very easy to tire yourself out trying to see everything or just get frustrated and steam on through to larger stuff at the end. Although, I’m pleased to say that this wasn’t the case this year.
The standard at the ‘low end’ was phenomenal, not that I’ve ever seen any bad work before but there has been a lot of unremarkable paintings in the past. What was missing this year was the celebrated ‘high end’ work, there was no naked Tony Blair getting expelled from paradise or anything that you could really latch on to as being the centre or highlight of the exhibition.
I think what will stick out for people is Tracy Emin’s gallery. The very fact that it’s darkened sets it apart from the rest of the bright Summer Exhibition, then there’s the rather understated notice (pictured above) out side… and then there’s its content. This is not a collection of Emin’s work but rather her personal choice of things she wanted included (mainly from her friends and colleagues.) The content is definitely shocking and a few a pieces are definitely not for the faint hearted!
Talk is Cheap.
The above image will be deleted once it’s been downloaded from my server 100 times.
It’s not over yet… at the Et Cetera Gallery
Thursday night I found my self in a basement in the Hollow Earth of Hackney, attending a private viewing at the Et Cetera Gallery.
I was there to see the work of Mr. Gary Alford, a friend-of-a-friend and occasional drinking buddy who’s work, despite being with the likes of the Wu-Tang Clan, I’d never seen.
Dark, understated and intimate - I loved it. A small series of oil paintings almost in the style of twisted fashion photography, depicting beautiful girls in dark suburban settings or doing disturbing things. Very different from the usual Hoxton Bohemia I’ve seen recently in small North London galleries.
Check out Gary’s MySpace or go along to the gallery!
Paul Mellon’s Legacy at The Royal Academy
In an effort to do something other than stay at home playing with my guitar or XBox, this morning I went to see part of Paul Mellon’s collection being exhibited at The Royal Academy with my Dad. I’m not a great fan of Stubb’s horses or Turner’s seascapes but having dragged my farther round a Georg Baselitz exhibition earlier in the year I thought I’d return the favour.
I was pleasantly surprised by some of the work on display, especially Turner’s softer water colours - something I knew he did but had never really seen much of. There was also a few of Blake’s illustrations in a rather crowded corner of the penultimate gallery, I wish I’d had longer to look at them but the display case had become quite a bottle neck.
I’ve said before that, in my opinion, art begins where reproduction ends. This is why I’ve never been a fan of the classic portrait in oils, but another (almost contradictory) reason is traditionally portrait artists were expected to embellish what they were reproducing - to make prize bulls beefier and daughters more attractive. Surely that is Craft not Art? Looking at some of the incredible farm yard animals this morning, it struck me that perhaps this ‘embellishment’ is equivalent to our modern day Heat magazine retouchers…
Afterwards we walked up to Tottenham Court Road to have a look at cameras as my trusty Coolpix S1 seems to have given up the ghost. We had lunch in the Fitzroy Tavern which is a pub I used to go to a lot a few years back. The more I read about London the more (in)famous characters I find that used to drink there - George Orwell being the latest. It hadn’t changed at all since my last visit, which was nice.
New Photos
One of the things I wanted to do when I started working on this site (about 5 years ago) was show case some of my own work, especially my photography.
Now five years later, while I never finished writing my own blog framework, I have got word press installed and some of my code, thoughts and a few musical recordings published… but until now no photography.
I own 4 digital cameras and Aperture tells me I have 4740 images in my library, why I have not published any until now? I don’t know, maybe I still hold hope of get my own CMS up and running (it was really neat - chatted to Aperture with SOAP and Apple Events) or maybe I’m just being lazy again, who knows.
Any way, here are 3 new photos that I took last night… I’m not sure if I should offer any explanation or not, perhaps not.
Dk0
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Slava’s Snow Show
Today at lunch I saw a poster for one of the most amazing pieces of physical theatre I’ve ever seen. It’s called Slava’s Snow Show, it’s the work of a Russian clown known off stage as Slava Polunin, who was studying mime and the art of clowning in Leningrad at the age of 17.
In 80’s Slava formed The Theatre of the Art of Modern Clowning which gave birth to his Snow Show, which combines traditional clowning with theatrical expressionism and Russian avant-garde. The show explores imagination, loneliness and ends with one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen…
I can’t recommend it enough, I’ve seen it 3 times!