The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

I'm trying without much success - and the summer is running away with me... to settle on my concept for next years college work and I have so many ideas I'm finding it difficult to commit - It needs to be something I can work with throughout the whole year, something I can get me teeth into - and develop - and lose myself to ....

I think may be I need a little bit of space and a bit of R&R before I make a decision that my whole years work may be based on so in the meantime I shall just wander and sketch and hope the idea evolves so with this in mind I headed to the Royal Academy for further inspiration. I went to the Summer Exhibition a long time ago and for some reason never quite got round to revisiting. I decided to make it my mission this year having seen the variety at New Designers I felt that the variety presented at the Summer Exhibition 2019 would really complement my summer culture fix!

I wasn't wrong! the 2019 summer exhibition was an eclectic mix of every conceivable art form and some of it was stunning. I particularly like some of the sculptural exhibits - two very different pieces stood out for me.

I loved the tunnocks tiger - Easy Tiger - Mach Brothers by David Mach RA (£57,000 if you are interested)

I used some tunnocks wrappers in a piece I did a couple of years ago but with nothing like the impact this marvelous beast had!

There were over 1500 pieces of art on display (chosen from 16000 entries) and the other sculpture presentation I liked was Parliament - The Voices In Your Head by Tim Shaw, this piece was made from straw and black plastic - very effective as it whispered at you....

made from Black bin liners and straw - sums up our current government!!!

There were a lot of paintings and mixed media showing that I really liked, some more contemporary than others - some more political than I might want hanging in my actual house but with strong messages and inspiring content. (Jeremy Deller - we are all Immigrant scum..)

There were gentler examples of art appealing in a completely different way - more subtle statements and some of it was just probably art for pleasure - I liked the way I had to keep looking at this one to decided quite what it was and what it was made up of... its called Isabella Bird by James Fisher.

I still haven't entirely got my ideas together - but this plan of searching all avenues will continue through the summer - its a busy one as always and I'm sure something will emerge and become the right path.. eternally optimistic ha ha ... something to do with natural patterns and layers and mixed media is calling from a distance - next stop the Natural History Museum to see what happens there!!!

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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