Does it take me deeper into the world?
A visit to the Royal Scottish Academy's Annual Exhibition, celebrating 200 years
The 200th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy finished recently here in Edinburgh.
I have to admit to feeling fairly prejudiced towards what I have always assumed this institution to stand for and to be. I look up at the vast neo-classical pillars of its imposing building at the foot of The Mound on Princes Street and see privilege, elitism, wealth built on the slave trade; and an imaginary sign saying ‘only those who play the game are welcome here’.
I think this is the first time I’ve actually been to the Annual Exhibition. My only exposure to it previously was seeing artists posting on Facebook, thrilled to have been accepted; standing proudly beside their small framed offering, half lost in a sea of paintings which stretched from ceiling to floor.
I have a bit of a problem with chasing gongs and seeking public recognition. It’s always seemed to me so nakedly childish, and so unhelpful for the spirit of whatever the field in question was really about. I used to hate the ‘Teacher of the Year Award’ that came in to British universities. I was teaching busy, stressed, reluctant Further Education teachers, trying to seduce them into wanting to ask questions and think in new ways about what they had already been doing for years. Trying to be recognised as ‘an exceptional teacher’ seemed to entirely miss the point of it for me.
If I felt like that about teaching, I feel it even more about art. Of course most people who make art want to put it out into the world, to show it in a place where it might have a chance of reaching another human being. The art wants to be received somewhere, to deliver its energy and its story. But for me that doesn’t necessarily mean institutional, formal recognition and approval.
Institutions, competitions, grants, sales, are of course, all necessary if you’re trying to pay your bills with your art. The reason I’ve never done that myself is that it seemed to me that if I expected people to give me money for my art, then I was going to have to find out what the people with the money wanted, and work out how to give them some version of that. And I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to have to bend myself into the shape of the declared aims of funders, take the temperature of the art market, press the flesh of the right people in the right places at the right time. I didn’t want to have to work my way through a list of prescribed activities; secure the achievements and exhibitions that institutions are looking for in order to make a grade that they define. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, if that’s what you want to do. Why not? But it doesn’t appeal to me. It goes against my personal sense of what art is; its purpose, its mystery.
Institutional gatekeeping; in-groups and out-groups; hallowed halls of acceptance and sad corridors of rejection. It’s something about pedestalling - that where you want to get to is above and beyond you somehow - and that until someone offers you a hand and offers to pull you up there to join them, what you make is never going to be enough.
I carried all these half-baked ideas and prejudices under the pillared entrance and through the great doors, all the way up the sweeping marble steps, into the white rooms with gold-painted numbers which I’ve experienced in a few different ways over this last year or so (New Contemporaries in 2025, and Andrew Goldsworthy in 2026).
I’m actually completely sick of my own cynicism and jaded assumptions, and had decided that I was going to try to find work that spoke to me in some way, rather than getting pulled into writing about the things that I found horrible or disappointing. I visited the exhibition three times, and each time I came away with a different impression.
The first time I was completely overwhelmed. Walls crammed with framed two-dimensional work, sculptures, films, installations.
Apart from the sheer quantity of work, I was struck by two things. First of all, the curation seemed spacious and clever.
There was so much work, covering such a diverse range of materials and approaches, and yet it all had room to breathe. When I think about it now, I realise that in some ways I enjoyed the way that everything had been arranged every bit as much as the actual work on display.
The second thing was a sense, as I was leaving, that what I so often feel has been lost in contemporary art was somehow still present here. Work that showed long hours of apprenticeship in relation to learning craft and skill, work that felt connected to a history of ideas and practice, as well as searching for a new idea. Though I hadn’t necessarily loved a lot of what I had seen, I had felt myself surrounded by dedication, thoughtfulness, care.
When I thought about this afterwards I realised that this may be partly to do with the fact that many of the current RSAs are older, and would have received a more ‘traditional’ training in drawing, painting and/or sculpture. I spoke to someone in the exhibition who had been at art school twenty years ago, and he said that even in his degree these skills were no longer taught; that tutors would ask him what kind of paint he was thinking of using, and why; what kind of medium would be best for the idea that he wanted to execute. I found this fascinating. Questions about how different media might help explore a mental construct, rather than learning and practising skills of material and execution.
I guess some people would say that what I responded to in the exhibition was a kind of conservatism; that I have an outdated, reactionary attitude towards what art is. But I loved the way that I felt time stretching back, showing me how this moment was generated by everything that had gone before, how these images in the present were stitched into a very long tail.
I wasn’t that excited by a lot of what I saw, but perhaps what I think I want from art is rarely to be found anywhere. After exploring Buhner’s ideas last week, I now find myself simply asking ‘Did any of this work take me deeper into the world?’.
Here is the work that did.
I absolutely adored these paintings.
I can’t tell you why. A fifties feel, perhaps, or maybe because it was a more interesting version of something I’m exploring myself at the moment.
Or perhaps it reminded me of the work of Brian McFie, a friend and a mighty figure in Scottish art and music who died suddenly and way too young two weeks ago.
Joyce Gunn Cairns, whose work I’ve always loved and who I’m hoping to talk to soon about her experience of the art world over a number of decades.
Leon Morrocco, a long-standing favourite for his fabulous draughtsmanship and use of colour.
I was tickled by some of the ceramics.
Livia Martin.
Catherine Hammerton.
Phil Royali.
I think I got some kind of an education from this exhibition.
An overview of a vast field which should make me more careful about saying glib and uninformed things about the state of contemporary art. Some resonances, which have made me think about what I value, and helped me to notice what I respond to, and perhaps a little of why. Possibly a bit of humility in relation to my entrenched positions about institutions and gatekeeping.
The RSA is a charity which receives no government funding:
This year we will be giving out over £230,000 in awards, scholarships and funding, plus numerous ‘in kind’ opportunities. Including income from sales, on average we currently disperse over £500,000 to artists and architects every year.
Exhibition introduction
The exhibition is still online here if you want to have a look.
Bugger, bugger bugger! It closes a day or so before we visit Edinburgh. Is there anything good on in the week before the 4th of July?
I usually find the annual RSA exhibition a bit staid but this has been incredible .. vibrant, challenging and inspiring. Like you I visited several times .. as always a joy to have these moments and venues, whatever their past history, now available for all and woven in, should we choose, to our shared cultural landscape. Thank you for a great article 💕