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!!!

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Autumnal Garden Days

I love these (rare) warm sunny late summer days and there is all sorts of lovely things going on in my garden... I counted 12 red admiral butterflies whizzing around the over grown ivy which I had been about to hack down but then left until the flutterbies have finished with it... The late blooms add a dash of colour and the daisy strewn lawn is littered with autumnal leaves, debris from my brief half an hour of slash and burn and the stone wall is covered in glorious soft moss all shiny and tactile with a few late nasturtiums loitering. I've hacked out the brambles for this year, sadly I missed the fruit as we were away, ditto the strawberries, we never seem to get the fruit before the birds so I've made space and moved the plants that were getting swamped and so not performing to their potential - hopefully next year they will literally blossom now they have light and room to flourish.

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished... it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh... I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic! there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....

Planet Ruby Starrs

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