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!!!

RubyStarrs in Paris...

Finally we have made it to Paris. It was a bit of a long travel day - we decided to come by train so we could experience the full glory of British Rail or whatever it's called now which actually delivered perfectly on time... and then the Eurostar which was incredibly disappointing! All that beautiful St. Pancreas Station and the Eurostar is sited in the dungeon... overcrowded, dark, lousy facilitated space... and then the train was an hour late it felt like a long time before we got any fresh air - but eventually we wound up in gay Paree... We navigated the metro and found our airbnb gaff. A mere 70 steps to the fourth floor on a rather lovely winding wooden staircase to a very nice roof top flat which is comfortable and gives a view across a lovely Courtyard with some obviously much posher flats. It's located really centrally about two minutes away from the Opera Garnier so a very good location for getting everywhere...

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 backyards.... We got off th

Another Day in Norway where our Trusty Traveller finds Tromsø, Trolls and Totally misses Aurora....

Tromsø - the most northern city on the planet... Its quite a pretty little town with lots of wood fronted shops, but of course like everywhere like this, it is just one big tourist hive and every shop is selling 'indigenous' gifts- didthe Sami make aurora themed mugs and fridge magnets? Nearest I'll get a polar bear (i hope) Although I have to say I did like the big stuffed polar bear and black bear and I am presuming that these are either not real (unlikely) or culled as they sometimes have to be. But most of the stuff is just northern lights tat or Troll tat. Peer Gynt.. famous worldover To be fair the best bit of Tromsø for me was the Troll Museum! We went to the art gallery which was quite interesting (see instagram account) but not astounding, but I always like to look at the local art. We had a mooch around town in the snow and then we went to find the Trolls. This museum was absolutely crazy daft... it was totally dedi

Planet Ruby Starrs

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