Summer in the City — atlasfloyd

It was a baking hot day in London when I got to the RA Summer Exhibition. I arrived to see people filing out of the RA, “Blimey it can’t be that bad can it?” It was actually a fire alarm. It did seem as though I wasn’t going to get to get a look in this year as my train up was 40 minutes late and I had a short, packed day in The Smoke. Eventually a guard came in and said everyone could come back in, he received a ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ flavoured round of applause.

They’d painted the stairway to the galleries in a mulit-coloured pattern. It set the tone for a good humored, light and fresh Summer Exhibition. The redecorating extended to the first room/sanctum which was painted a warm pink as was one of the later rooms which was a nice contrast to the endless white.

For the first time I really noticed how the hanging worked, although the ‘outsider’ art portraits of Simon Cowell, Grayson Perry and Damien Hurst together did smack of trying a bit too hard. Talking of everyone’s favourite cross dressing fine artist I really liked his huge Tapesty – Julie and Roh – in the Print Room (there was some justification for a tapestry in the print room, but can’t remember what it was). Part of the appeal was the sheer size of the piece at over 12 foot, but the image of middle age/middle class couple was arresting. I overheard someone saying “That must have take him ages to do.” Yeah him and the Korean sweatshop workers he probably farmed the work out to.

Maybe it was because I’ve been focusing on my lino cuts recently that I focused in on the prints in the Summer Exhibition.

They’d painted the stairway to the galleries in a mulit-coloured pattern. It set the tone for a good humoured, light and fresh Summer Exhibition. The redecorating extended to the first room/sanctum which was painted a warm pink as was one of the later rooms which was a nice contrast to the endless white.

For the first time I really noticed how the hanging worked, although the ‘outsider’ art portraits of Simon Cowell, Grayson Perry and Damien Hurst together did smack of trying a bit too hard. Talking of everyone’s favourite cross dressing fine artist I really liked his huge Tapesty – Julie and Roh – in the Print Room (there was some justification for a tapestry in the print room, but can’t remember what it was). Part of the appeal was the sheer size of the piece at over 12 foot, but the image of middle age/middle class couple was arresting. I overheard someone saying “That must have take him ages to do.” Yeah him and the Korean sweatshop workers he probably farmed the work out to.