Summer arrives to the Royal Academy

The new season brings along with it the summer exhibition, an event celebrated by this British institution since more than two centuries ago. More than 1000 works by renowned and emerging artists in an invigorating proposal by an Academy that looks for a renovation

Thousands of aluminium bottle-tops that were collected in the streets of Nigeria and plaited to become a huge golden blanket cover the façade of the Royal Academy of Arts building in London: Burlington House, an ancient classical mansion in Piccadilly which is hard to imagine covered with waste. The responsible for this action that contraposes the mainstream to what is new and refreshing is the African artist El Anatsui. The installation TSIATSIA - searching for connection welcomes the visitors to the Summer Exhibition, celebrated by the institution since 245 years ago.

The Europeans were the ones who took the production of bottles to Africa, which nowadays are produced locally. As part of this piece, the bottle-tops go back to their origin carrying with them the experience of the Nigerians that handled them. For the artist, this way the tops acquire new and evocative meanings as it also happens with the thousand artworks that form this exhibition, in which artworks by renowned and emerging artists is shown indistinctively. 

The Royal Academy of London was founded in 1768 with a mission: to provide art and contemporary artists with a clear and convincing voice. To this aim the Academy committed itself to organize an annual exhibition of the work of the professors and those students following the art programme of the Academy, offering the public the possibility of purchasing the exhibited pieces to defray the education of those students in the school, which is supported exclusively via private funds. 

Managed by artists and architects, the first president of the Academy (until 1792) was the portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, King George III’s court painter, and nowadays it is headed by the painter Christopher Le Brun. The jury of the Royal Academy has selected more than one thousand artworks out of the ten thousand pieces received among painting, sculpture, photography, video, architecture and engraving. The fact that renowned artists exhibit their works together with emerging artists, besides being a democratic proposal of the art world, is a way of challenging today’s artistic creation without external conditioning factors; an investment in the future of the Academy, usually perceived as a bit antiquated by the youngest generations.

In the exhibition visitors can admire the work by recent members as Sean scully, Jock McFayden and Ron Arad (a print of a digitally flattened-out 3D model of a Fiat) and by senior professors as Anthony Caro, who presents a monumental piece half way between sculpture and architecture named Shadows. There’s also Marina Abramovic’s photo series ME & ME, in which the artist offers two different versions of herself. The portrait is a privileged genre in this event, as the artworks are gathered in an exclusive room where photographs and paper works by Frank Auerbach, Alex Katz and the professors Tom Phillips and Michael Craig-Martin are exhibited.  

More info: Royal Academy of Arts

From June 10th to August 18th