For many years it was an annual tradition for me to meet up with my grandfather to visit the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. This continued until he was well into his 90s. He always wore his hat and waved his walking stick to point out features of interest in various works of art as people ducked out of the way and would proclaim his admiring or questioning opinions with conviction despite, in later years, his failing eyesight. His mind was always razor sharp and he had a lively curiosity about life, with an interest in art and architecture.
I’ve kept the tradition of annual visits, sometimes with company or alone but as something catches my eye as I pass through the throngs of visitors, I think “I wonder what granddad would have made of that.”
This year’s exhibition was the usual mixture of bonkers, beautiful and inspiring.
It is wonderful that every artist has a chance to have their work exhibited at the Royal Academy alongside royal academicians. This year there were 1728 entries in the catalogue, so many different interpretations of “art”. Architecture was no longer relegated to one gallery but dispersed throughout.

So many different mediums used, among them – waste marble dust, ocean plastic, balsa wood, Jesmonite, metal shavings and textiles fused in beeswax, bleached horse chestnut burr, photogravure, grass, insulation board. Alongside were many in more familiar mediums oil, acrylic, ink etc.
Some work grabbed attention such as the huge hanging meat carcasses by Tamara Koostianovsky which on closer inspection are constructed with recycled fabric with motifs of birds and flowers, the collection of rats by Zatorski and Zatorski constructed from “real” rats lined with gold. Others are quietly waiting to be noticed amongst the hustle and bustle such as the already small portrait of a cat where you had to look closely to see “ I found cod” written on the cap it is wearing.

The Summer Exhibition continues to divide opinions but reviewers have mainly agreed that this year’s exhibition was one of the best for a while.
Next summer, leave your excess clothing and bags in the lockers, make sure you are well hydrated but have had a precautionary cloakroom visit, take your little catalogue and enter the fray where viewing, amongst all the visitors is, as one reviewer stated, an endless compromise, but worth the effort.

Michele Summers