Thursday, june 18th, 2009 - Tracey Emin and Royal Academy

Thursday, june 18th, 2009

Tracey Emin and Royal Academy summer show

Today, we would head town towards White Cube’s Second half, their space in which Tracey Emin was Exhibiting. Her work mainly deals with her history of troubles relationships and sexual abuse from men. the work encapsulated her drawings, stitched work and neon tube-lit messages.

Can’t really say i enjoyed the show all that much. Having looked through Emin’s publications previously, i just didn’t see how she was advancing. add this with her current state, a pleading artist to the conservative party in britain, and you’ve got yourself one stale re-hash of a show coming close to eating leftovers from a potluck party.

Tracey even ventured into video work, but the looped image of  a masturbating woman still felt lacking. Sorry, Tracey, but you’re just not putting out.

After that, we headed to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and Graduating show. The show consisted of a sale of their collections and a basement show from the graduating students.  The show consisted of well over 1200 artworks, everything from painting to video art. 

Many of the rooms were divided mainly by medium. Some rooms just had small paintings and prints displayed salon style, while others were presented in more gallery-esque spaces, with fair distancing of larger work. My favorite piece in the gallery was a piece called “Havana”, an arrangement of red and yellow squares as a geometrical abstract piece, all painted on canvas. both Anthony Wisshaw and John Hoyland were also good painters for me. 

Down to the Graduate Show section of the Royal Academy was work that was, overall, more installation based and experimental in their end result. 

A refreshing collection came from Nicky Carvell, who’s abstractive wall graphics and aluminum folded sculptures on the ground resembled the distorted computer graphics seen in old games, mixed with the prolific stylings from clothing brands like Volcom and Billabong. Also interesting to mention are Katherine Thomas’ bike-to-fan-to generator-to-soundactiviated-toy installation and Robert leech’s “blow” ( a can of paint with an air tube blowing a constant hole in the surface of the paint).

After This, we took a good walk towards Buckingham Palace, where the queen hangs out, you know? before getting to this, though, we took a look at the Canadian War Monument nearby. It very much so resembled the Washington Vietnam war memorial in the United States. The difference in this momument was the sculpture protruded from the ground up, making a small walkway with, what was on top, a waterflow over indented canadian leafs. the water doesn’t flow much anymore, namely due to a lack of funding from canadian government to take care of it. Thanks, harper.

and on that note, we finished off with the Queen’s Crib. it’s a nice spot, gotta say.

most of today's events are covered in this video, too. hope you like it!