After Nyne Reflects: Highlights from the RA Summer Exhibition 2016
The spectacle that is the RA Summer Exhibition is reaching the final week of its 248th year, a year which has seen Richard Wilson RA place acclaimed artistic duos alongside prodigious customary entries from emerging and established artists alike. To celebrate 2016’s show, After Nyne’s Assistant Editor recounts some personal highlights…
Kutluğ Ataman: ‘The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci'
It’s all about perspective in Kutlûg Ataman’s immersive contribution to this year’s show. Sweeping across the ceiling of Gallery I, somewhat reminiscent of a magic carpet, ‘The Portrait of Sakip Sabanci' is at once striking and inviting in its vast technicolour web of undulating and interconnecting screens. Tilting one’s neck to gaze upwards, each screen can be deciphered as a changing surface of some 10,000 smaller portraits, inciting contemplation as to who these individuals may be and how and why they came to be here. After a little contextual digging, we find the individuals to be those whose lives were affected by the philanthropy of businessman Sakip Sabanci; Ataman is making a poignant statement here that our person is composed and defined by those whose lives we touch.
Alice Anderson: ‘Elevator Data’
The shimmering surface of Alice Anderson’s ‘Elevator Data’ is immediately captivating, as is it’s almost immovable presence. As one circles the large rectangular sculpture, bound entirely in copper thread, light dances across each individual filament suggesting a smooth liquid appearance, temptingly tactile. Whilst the process of wrapping objects is not entirely unfamiliar, take Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ for example, Anderson’s method of recording objects through an often performative approach is charismatically idiosyncratic.
Anthony Farr: ‘He Should be Here Soon’
This work is testament to the nature of the summer show to reveal unexpected treasures from otherwise obscure artists. The mysterious nature of Anthony Farr’s darkly humorous and formally interesting work is only intensified by the absence of information surrounding the circumstances of its making and the biography of the maker. While being denied context is sometimes frustrating, there is an overriding liberation to be found in deducing a subjective response based purely on form. Acrylic paint layered in part like oil pastel narrates a scene in which six figures inhabit a pitch black night; five stand atop a hill against the dark sky whilst a sixth lays beneath them, in an illuminated underground chamber. The humour comes into play when we consider the title, ‘He Should Be Here Soon’; the audience is free to run away with their own interpretations. Is the artist instigating a dramatic irony, whereby the viewer is aware that the character the figures seek is directly below them?
Ellsworth Kelly Hon RA: ‘Leucothoe’
Adjacent to Gilbert and George’s domineering ‘Beard Aware’ and El Anatsui’s shimmering ‘Avocado Coconut Egg (Ace)’, hang three poised figurative plant studies by the late Ellsworth Kelly. Penciled in delicate yet confident line, ‘Leucothoe’ is a testament to the artist’s lifelong pursuit of fundamental form; Kelly generated numerous plant studies in parallel to his large scale sculptures and abstract paintings, the latter of which he is most commonly associated with. This work holds the viewer’s attention in it’s unassuming simplicity, relaying a subtle nod to the timeless mimetic processes of observation and study of form as a cornerstone to much artistic practice.
Laura Ford: ‘Seated Squid Girl’
At less than 30cm in height, Seated Squid Girl delivers an appealing sense of personality and humour which outweighs, and is most likely reliant in some part upon, its votive scale. Ford, a British artist, regularly presents curious human-animal hybrids and, as the title suggests, this work is no exception. Beneath her mantle and folded tentacles, Squid Girl dangles her human feet, adorned with white socks and pink shoes, over the edge of the plinth where she sits. Upon encountering this bronze sculpture, it is almost impossible for the viewer to resist inventing their own narratives about this charming, yet unsettling, character.
Jock McFadyen RA: ‘From the Greenway’
In Gallery IV, we encounter works which see artists responding to their surroundings in all manner of disparate media, one which is particularly eye catching is that produced by the room’s curator, Jock MacFadyen. Broad expanses of sweeping sky over dystopian cityscapes are a signature element of Macfadyen’s work, and this piece is no exception with dramatic contrasts of light and dark recounting an ominous landscape of solemn skyscrapers overlooking a deserted playing field. Whilst figurative, From the Greenway dejects any three dimensional illusionism via a shallow pictorial plane created with a painterly and materialist approach. Here MacFadyen strives for more than just a realist rendering of a landscape; he works to describe the personality of a place, its life and history, and in doing so effectively creates a humanised portrait of the urban environment.
Tom Phillips RA: ‘In Memoriam Yogi Berra’
Unashamedly conspicuous, ‘In Memorium Yogi Berra’ amalgamates iconographic and typographic references in an appealingly clean and bold aesthetic. From across the gallery, an imperative message reading ‘when you come to a fork in the road take it’ cuts through a psychedelic background. However, as the visitor approaches the work to take full advantage of the perspective offered by its eye-level hang, the hazy background becomes a composed pointillist arrangement, the words become a confusion of lines and angles in negative space. A master of utilising literary form, Tom Phillips has presented an abstracted assemblage of line and colour, various forks in the road, where the observer’s eye can wander and construct its own path.
Jake and Dinos Chapman: ‘The New Arrival’
Unsurprisingly, this year’s entry from the Chapman brothers is causing visible amounts of discomfort and intrigue, playing on ideas of morbid curiosity. Three dirtied mannequins stand around a bronze painted sculpture, composed of a number of elements arranged to resemble some kind of grotesque milk machine, an assembly line of mammary glands, milk bottles and severed heads. Observing the contraption, visitors keep their footsteps light, in what seems to be an irrationally subconscious effort to avoid being heard by the mannequins; ‘heard’ being the optimum word here as, reminding of the plight of Oedipus, each mannequin’s eyes have been gouged out of their sockets and placed in their owner’s hands. Considering the theme of Gallery VI, art’s role in healing a shattered world, we could interpret this work as a political statement on the controversial dairy industry, and even notions of blind ignorance.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss: ‘Büsi’
The attraction in Fischli and Weiss’ work can be found in an ability to harness the simplicities of everyday life and transfer them into something enchanting, a trait perfectly demonstrated in ‘Büsi'. A cat laps up milk from a saucer in a high definition film lasting just under four minutes and set to a continuous loop. The overexposure, lack of soundtrack, and banality of the footage mimics the aesthetics of home-video, yet placed within the gallery environment the work takes on an entirely new, and somewhat profane, visual. The repetition is captivating with passers by stopping for ten minutes or so to observe the ordinary ritual.
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016 runs until August 21st
Image: Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2016 (c) Stephen White
