Royal Academy, London
Amid a sea of tasteful landscapes, only the BLM room and apocalyptic works by Tracey Emin and Anselm Kiefer are in tune with our troubled times
For some reason I expected a sense of urgency. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has been directly hit by the pandemic – delayed until they’ve had to scribble “Winter” over its traditional title. The Academy itself is facing such financial chaos as a result of this year’s revenue loss it says it will have to sack 150 people, or maybe sell its Michelangelo. But if you arrive, as I did, anticipating a survey of the state of our harrowed souls, a great gathering of lockdown projects that take the rapid pulse of the time, you’re thinking of a very different institution. This place is more than 250 years old and, boy, does it feel like it.
The exhibition at least begins as if the artists have been watching the news. The first room recognises the year of Black Lives Matter with a gathering of black Royal Academicians including Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling and Yinka Shonibare. The most arresting piece is Isaac Julien’s wall-filling photographic assemblage Lessons of the Hour, London 1983 – Who Killed Colin Roach? This history painting made of black and white photographs reminds you suffering and protest have a long story to tell. Colin Roach died of a gunshot wound in the entrance of Stoke Newington police station in 1983.
