This month, Artist, Educator and Presenter Grace Adam gives an honest review of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.
Love it, hate it, not bothered about it; the Summer Exhibition is here. Since its inception centuries ago, critics have heaped praise on it and poured scorn on it in equal measure. Every single year for the last 279 years, the Royal Academy of Arts in London has put on a huge annual exhibition, an art extravaganza. In 1824, The National Gallery opened. Prior to this, if you wanted to see a great art collection, you had to be well-heeled, well-connected and well-travelled. Country houses and royal palaces were packed with Italian purchases and family heirlooms. The church had weathered ups and downs to say the least and had decided that maybe churches and art didn’t mix.
The RA Annual Show started the process of democratising art. For the price of a ticket, you could go and enjoy art in a new kind of secular space-an art gallery. This show is the largest and oldest open submission exhibition in the world and anyone over 18 can enter. This year the selection panel of the Summer Exhibition capped submissions at 18,000! The Royal Academy of Arts committee; eight academicians headed up by Ryan Gander OBE RA selected work under the broad theme of Interconnectedness. Why not consider putting forward 2 pieces next year? With 1,823 works in the show this year, not bad odds. Your work may end up hanging next to a Dame Tracey Emin painting, or a Sir Grayson Perry tapestry.
So, what’s in it this year? Here are a few interesting pieces. There are always a couple of cat sculptures in the show. In fact, there has for many years been an animal tradition. Entire walls are filled with cows, cats and chickens. This year there is a furry sculpture of Palmerston, who was Chief Mouser at the Foreign Office. Note his placement in front of a painting of a pigeon! There’s also Tailchaser, a large bronze cat lounging on its back.
There’s a beautifully crafted, utterly convincing painted bronze of a flat tyre by Gavin Turk and a floor to ceiling string of wine bottle labels; What the Stress Amounts To by Joseph Grigely. Presumably if the 95K asking price is achieved his stress will immediately melt away.
If you want to see some wonderful painting, check out Sikelela Owen’s Dancing Wave, and I love this sculpture; Torque by Kate MccGwire. Every time I walk past, I have to stop and peer at it; a strange serpentine form made of pheasant feathers contained within a glass case. It seems to belong in a dusty corner of a natural history museum. It is beautiful and uncanny.
What is special about the Summer Show is of course the mesmerising variety of art, but also it is testament to the thousands of hours that people have dedicated to creating. This should always be celebrated.
The Summer Exhibition 2026 at the Royal Academy of Arts runs until August 23, 2026, in the Main Galleries of Burlington House. Also, visit Grace Adam Artist.
Featured image of Grace Adam – supplied
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