A winter visit to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2020

 

Colour notes | paper relief prints| Christopher Le Brun PPRA

Be grateful for small things.
That is my new motto. As more and more is taken away from us due to Covid-19, it is the little things that matter.

My other half (OH) and I have been holed up together for a very long time, and a chance to make a trip to London to see the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy was a rare treat.

Our tickets had been previously cancelled due to lockdown, so this trip was all the more anticipated by our culture starved selves.

So on a rainy December Monday we crept up to London on the quiet mid day train, walked the empty streets of Picadilly, and made our way around the exhibition in our masks.


The first work that caught my eye was a collage.

Untitled | collage with paper pins | Frida Orupabo

Frida Orupabo is a Nigerian-Norwegian; one of several invited black artists on show.
I had to do some research to fully understand what Frida was trying to convey. According to her website;
'Frida Orupabo is a sociologist and artist living and working in Oslo, Norway. Her work consists of digital and physical collages in various forms, which explore questions related to race, family relations, gender, sexuality, violence and identity.'

Heavy stuff for starters. Race and politics. I had been attracted to it as I was thinking about collage, and how so much can be said with a few pieces of paper reaaranged on a page.

OH had already disappeared off to view the galleries at his own pace. Conscious that 'lunchtime' was the most important item on his agenda I resolved to move at a reasonable pace, and stop only at those works that really caught my eye.

Socially distanced viewing at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition 2020

It was a treat to have so much room to view.  The galleries never felt crowded, and I felt completely safe.

The fact that the following day we were thrown into Tier 4 made me realise how lucky we were to have made the trip.

Legs | photographs | Hans Peter Feldmann

Legs caught my eye next. No frame; just some photos stuck to the wall.

As a conceptual artist Hans-Peter sells similar works for $20,000, so he is doing something right. Further research about him led me to another work of his that confirmed a dry sense of humour; something I cannot resist...

Hans -Peter Feldmann | Pictures of car radios taken while good music was playing | 2004

 

In 2010 he won  the Guggenheim Hugo Boss art prize. He celebrated by pinning the £100,000 prize onto the gallery walls as 100,000 $1 notes, raising questions about the value of art.

It was good to see paintings by Fred Cuming from the Rye area and Camber Sands.
His work is immediately identifiable to me after getting to know it in local Rye galleries. He  visited my studio on an open studio visit a few years ago, and is a truly charming gentleman who has a way with clouds.....

Paintings by Fred Cuming RA

I particularly enjoyed his painting of a February peasmarsh landscape, with its low wintry light.

February landscape, Peasmarsh | Fred Cuming RA

I also fell in love with a series of works by Cornelia Parker RA. These were a series of polymer gravure etchings based on the shadows of simple objects such as flowers and household objects, captured on light senstive paper.

Jug full of shadows | Cornelia parker RA | 2020

OH had 'done' the show in the blink of any eye.

His favourite was a work ' where you can see what it is.....'

I have no problem with that. It seems a lot of other visitors felt the same way,

Fuen Seow Cheen | LOST WONDERS OF THE SEA | Etching

There were a lot of dogs and portraits.

My favourite portraits were pencil drawings of cardboard faces by Russell Herron.

I had to get really close to see that thses were drawings and not cardboard collages. Sadly all sold.

Cardboard portrait 12 | Russell Herron

Cardboard portrait 11 | Russell Herron

I was also taken with a dog portrait by Ilona Arndt. He had so much more character than the standard labrador poses.

Hund NR 2 | Ilona Arndt

But lunch was beckoning.... there was too much to take in, as always.

Too much to take in at the RA Summer Exhibition

Different galleries had very different characters.

I enjoyed this quiet monochrome corner.

But if I had been allowed to take one work home it would have been a newspaper boat made of stone.

A playful sculpture.

A reminder of childhood days spent by the sea. Dreams of adventure.

I forgot to record who made it, so apologies for that.

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Looking at the Curator's selection I realise that there is so much work that I didn't even look at.

It is an overwhelming exhibition always.

But for one who had not looked at any new art for several months it was a welcome diversion, and a reminder that everyone has different taste.

Lunch was good!

Inspired by Laura Letinsky - the value of attempting to re-create another artist's photographic style.

One of the joys of being a photography student is the time spent looking at the work of other artists whose work may be relevant to the subject that one is currrently exploring. This week I have been thinking about still life as a means of conveying life within the home. I particularly admire the work of Laura Letinsky who creates staged still life's as observations of forgotten details and remnants of daily subsistence and pleasure.


Through October 30 by Laura Letinsky

Laura, a professor at the University of Chicago said " I started being more interested in the stuff around the people and how that stuff was a stand- in, metaphorically and materially, for the way people seek satisfaction through things".

This resonates with my current interest in possessions and signs of human activity; the chocolate wrappers and squashed drink cans on the street , the cars and statues in front gardens and the adverts on TV that tell us how life can be better.

Today I set myself the task of trying to create a still life in the manner of Letinsky; I find that emulating the work of others' that inspires me helps to progress the creative process and encourages experimentation with new subject matter, concepts or ways of presenting an idea. You might consider that copying someone elses work is not truly creative; but isn't that how most artists learn their craft? It would not do to present an end product that looks just like the work of a famous artist, but I believe it is reasonable to explore a technique, learning from errors and mishaps in a way that allows one to develop.

To create the effect I needed an all white surface, so I worked with a white chipboard wall and a plastic Ikea table in my studio.


My studio table






















I used daylight from a window on the right, and some bounced flash using a reflector to fill in the shadows towards the left. I started with some bits and pieces lying around me, including a blue plastic bag for a splash of colour. Laura uses a large format camera; I had to make do with my Canon 40D and 10-20mm lens. My new canon flash is a revelation; it does everything it says on the tin, and is a vast improvement on it's predecessor, allowing through- the- lens metering. What I like about Laura's work is the way she places objects on the edge of the frame, often close to falling off the surface used. This creates a visual tension.


Elements of a perfect life



I share a studio with Angelika, who has a roomful of toys for her art therapy.

 I moved on to playing around with objects that represent "home". I am mindful that many people in the world currently do not have such luxuries after the earthquake yesterday, and in my mind  am conscious of the distressing images of houses, cars and debris floating in a morass after the tsunami in Japan. Clean, fresh water is another luxury in many parts of the world. This image could be about how we take so much for granted.


House work



As an attempt at a Letinsky it fails.


 So I played around again with some different objects, including a feather duster that is entirely usesless, a plastic bag and the toy houses.

Reflecting on the images I realise that there can be many interpretations of what they "mean". This one could say something about the drudgery of everyday life; the cleaning and shopping. Or, depending on where the plastic bag comes from, it might convey a different message about materialism. It actually comes from The Whitechapel Gallery, another beautiful space that I have discovered as a result of doing this course, and therefore says something about the photographer.