Tom Jeffreys picks out his highlights from the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition 2012.
The sun may be out and the bunting hung, but there are few things that mark the start of the British summer quite like the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which has commenced previews this week and opens to the public on the bank holiday Monday.
Launched way back in 1769, the Summer Exhibition is the largest open exhibition in the UK, and with practically all of the works available for sale (from a few hundred pounds to a few hundred thousand), it's one of the Royal Academy's big annual money-makers. The RA Schools are mostly funded by profits from the show.
As a submissions-based exhibition, it's always a mixed bag, and drawing out general themes is not really what it's about. But this year, perhaps unsurprisingly, there's lots that more or less relates to London, the Olympics, mapping and architecture.
In addition, coinciding with the RA's potentially questionable rebrand by Pentagram, there's a little more innovation than usual in the largely salon-style hang. Sculpture is mostly shown on a range of grey plinths (it's a cool idea but the works are dreadful) whilst the small Weston Room is given over to a single artist's film. The display of artists' books is perhaps the most disappointing; squashed into a pair of too-small vitrines.
Most commendable though is the curation of Tess Jaray RA, who's thinned out the hang of the large Weston Room and brought the small-scale works out into Gallery III. The free-flowing wave-hang gives this massive room (which was until recently dominated by Hockney's massive iPad drawings) a rare lightness and rhythm. It's a clever, well thought-out decision, and the strongest section of the exhibition by a distance.
With 1,500 works on show, from little-known artists to bigshots like Tracey Emin, Martin Creed and Michael Craig-Martin, it can all get a little overwhelming. Here then, for you to seek out and argue over, are my ten highlights of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2012:
Alex Hudson – Rider
Oil on linen; £1,800
Gallery III (228)
White and flatly plastic, a folded triangle sticks upright in a wooded clearing, starkly slit by a smear of moonlight. The painterly technique and texture is not dissimilar to the likes of Katie Sims, whilst
the sense of something 'other', alien or amiss is reminiscent of Ryan Leigh's dabbles in the occult.
Nadine Feinson – Head 2
Oil; £2,000
Gallery III (336)
Great to see work by one of the UK's most exciting painters in the Royal Academy, even if this is not one of my very favourite works. The monochromatic Head 2 is a masterpiece of virtuoso brushwork from her PhD show: a landscape/portrait of cascading smears and mottled forests.
Nathaniel Rackowe – London, 17
Bitumen on powder-coated aluminium; £3,000
Gallery III (434)
Grubby tones and textures of bitumen contrast with hard clean lines of yellow (on aluminium) to evoke the still-brutal structures of contemporary London. There's a witty literalness as well as a bold sense of space that set Rackowe's work apart from other similar efforts in the exhibition.
Elfyn Lewis – Niwl y Bryn
Acrylic; £1,100
Gallery III (443)
A small-scale piece that shows the flexibility of acrylic paint at its best. A bold horizontal smear dominates proceedings with a sense of motion and power, but there's sufficient delicacy and detail here to maintain interest. Technically intriguing, Lewis was Welsh Artist of the Year in 2010.
George Shaw – The Gamble
Lithograph; £250 (edition of 100)
Gallery III (453)
Good to see a lithograph work from the 2011 Turner Prize-nominated artist George Shaw, much better known for his use of enamel paint. Commissioned by BALTIC, The Gamble continues Shaw's obsessive and blankly enigmatic documentation of the Tile Hill Estate in Coventry.
Christine Pereira-Adams – DNA Female DNA Male No.3
Lasercut pergamenata paper, nylon thread (artist's book); £350 (edition of 46)
Gallery I (807)
Definitely my favourite of the artists' books on show this year. Pereira-Adams' works explore the relationship between gender and science through delicately ethereal paper constructions: all hand-stitched paper layers and gentle curves.
Ben Cowd, Thomas Hopkins, Sara Shafiei – Solas Topography
Brass and paper; £12,500
Gallery V (967)
Ben Crowd and Sara Shafiei (better known as Saraben>studio) have joined forces with Thomas Hopkins to present this re-imagination of the 16th century Farnese Gardens in Rome. Brass combines with layer upon layer of paper to produce something really rather wonderful.
Various architects – various works
Pen, pencil, gyclee prints; prices vary
Gallery VI (972-991)
Architectural drawings never cease to amaze (and occasionally baffle) me, and there's some real technical gems on show in one corner of Gallery VI. In particular, I'm rather intrigued by Mike Dean's sinuous sci-fi drawing which, apparently it turns out, is a design for a dining room.
Cornelia Parker – Now and Then
Two silver-plated objects, one flattened by a 250-ton press, suspended on metal wire; £21,600
Gallery VIII (1271)
Cornelia Parker's trademark exploration of the use and value of everyday objects is neatly encapsulated in this witty, rather elegant piece. A silver-plated teapot dangles from the ceiling just above a dramatically flattened version of itself.
Rachel Mary Elliott – Fragile Entomology, Quiet
Kiln-fused glass powder and wood; £1,500
Gallery VIII (1281)
Exactly the kind of tucked-away treat by an artist I've never heard of that makes visiting the Summer Exhibition continually rewarding. Rachel Mary Elliott's small-scale piece consists of a little lone wood-framed slice of honeycomb, cast in glass. Simple, delicate, delightful.
The Summer Exhibition is at the Royal Academy from 4th June to 12th August 2012.
Image credit: Dr Crystal Bennes
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