Summer Fun — atlasfloyd

Saturday saw us travelling up to London for our annual trip to the Royal Academy for the Summer Exhibition. Well I say annual we missed last year because of my fuckwittery, but this year we managed to squeeze the final day of the exhibition in. An added bonus was that we were joined by our friends Simon and Vix, aka Mr and Mrs Biscuits. The first room had been hung with just monochrome art, which was a simple but bold move. The second room had a huge impressive Anslem Kiefer painting on the right side, and a bar at it’s centre, which was very welcome.

It was very apparent as early as the second room that this was a good year. Some of the rooms were better than others of course. I couldn’t look at the multiple rat sculpture, but most of the room’s really sang, although what was really noticeable was how much space there was. I’m used to see the walls covered with art from floor to ceiling but that wasn’t the case this year. It looked deliberate, I wonder what informed this decision. I’d hope that it wouldn’t stop Johnny Painters like me getting in.

We all played the game of checking the paintings against the prices in catalogue with the occasional fun exclamations of “How much?!” There were certainly a lot of work I would have been happy to go home with, especially the painting about ‘Motherly Love’ by Frances Featherstone (paining at the top) which I loved, and hung in a room with ‘family’ as its theme. The colour would suggest it’s set at either dusk or dawn and the women in the painting could be partners, sisters or friends. I don’t know and I don’t care. What shines out from the paintings is love, care and protection.

I did try and buy was an amazing lino print - pointed out by Mr Biscuits - of a set of stairs which had already sold out.

The quality and breadth of work was inspiring, and after dodging my studio for two months it’s pushed me back in, which can only be a good thing.