Category Archives: Royal Academy of Arts

‘I don’t know if I like it’: artist finally shown at Royal Academy after 31 attempts

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Alison Aye’s work will be seen alongside 481 other new exhibitors at the Summer Exhibition

Artist Alison Aye had a surprising reaction to being accepted for this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Founded in 1769, it’s the world’s oldest open submission show – a chance for hobbyist painters to hang next to Turner prize-winners and artists such as Tracey Emin and David Hockney, with everything for sale.

The 58-year-old textile and collage artist, who is based in London, has submitted work to the Royal Academy (RA) over the last 31 years, and always been rejected. But when, this year, she found out she had finally succeeded, she felt conflicted. “It’s the establishment acknowledging me and I don’t know if I like it,” she said. “There’s a part of me that thinks being on the losing side is all right.”

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Russian billionaire on EU sanctions list quits as Royal Academy trustee

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Exclusive: Petr Aven’s donation returned after he was called one of Putin’s closest oligarchs in the list

A Russian billionaire named in EU sanctions “as one of Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarchs” stepped down on Tuesday as a trustee of the Royal Academy, which has also returned a donation he made towards a Francis Bacon exhibition.

The RA – which had had been among UK cultural institutions and bodies facing calls to sever ties with Russian oligarchs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – said that the billionaire banker Petr Aven would be stepping down with immediate effect.

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Tracey Emin on beating cancer: ‘You can curl up and die – or you can get on with it’

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As she starts to rebuild her life after surgery, the artist shares her unflinchingly honest cancer self-portraits, talks about seeing dead people in hospital walls, and explains why she’s buying herself a punchbag – and kittens

‘I’m smiling and talking to you,” says Tracey Emin, sitting at her kitchen table. “But it’s not always like this.” We’ve been delaying this conversation until she finally felt well enough. She has been spending a lot of time in bed, just resting. On the phone, she sounded weak, but today she is indeed smiling, getting excited as she speaks – the Tracey who I have been fortunate enough to get to know.

“Now I’ve got a terrible pain in my legs, it’s unbearable. That’s why I’ve been in bed. I’m determined to go for a walk later because I hardly ever go out. I have a urostomy bag, so I have a major disability. The more well I get, the more annoying it is. Previously it was all right because I was on morphine. But now I want to do things and I can’t.”

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David Hockney on joy, longing and spring light: ‘I’m teaching the French how to paint Normandy!’

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While enjoying an idyllic lockdown in France, the 83-year-old artist has created perhaps his most important exhibition ever – offering hope to an injured world

‘I think it looks terrific,” says David Hockney. “It’s all on one theme, isn’t it? And there’s not many exhibitions like that, really, a show all about the spring.” The 83-year-old artist is taking a look around his new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London for the first time. He seems happy with it – and rightly so, for it is hypnotic and ravishing. But while I am getting a sneak preview in person, Hockney is here only virtually, his face appearing on two screens, one a giant TV, the other a small laptop.

He is at home, at what he calls his “seven dwarves house” in Normandy, wearing a red, black and white check jacket, a checkerboard tie, a blue-green pullover and round, gold-framed glasses. His kaleidoscopic choice of clothing, challenging the very limits of the video call’s bandwidth, is as vibrant and beguiling as the canvases hanging around us. Hockney has not just painted spring; he has come dressed as it.

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Tracey Emin on her cancer: ‘I will find love. I will have exhibitions. I will enjoy life’

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As she recovers from a brutal summer of cancer treatment, Tracey Emin takes us round her new show – and imagines spending the next 30 years painting in her pyjamas to the sound of birdsong

‘I am so lucky,” says Tracey Emin as we stand in the grand galleries of the Royal Academy. I can tell, from her brown eyes, that she’s smiling beneath her face mask. As we roam rooms painted moody blue for her new exhibition, in which her paintings, bronzes and neons are juxtaposed with the oils and watercolours of Edvard Munch, Emin adjusts her stoma bag occasionally and laughs a lot. “I’m in love with Munch,” she says. “Not with the art, but with the man. I have been since I was 18.”

This is not what I expected. Minutes earlier, walking through this London gallery’s courtyard, I felt darkness descending everywhere. England was re-entering lockdown, Biden hadn’t yet won Michigan and the last visitors to the Royal Academy for a month were heading out into the night. I expected the 57-year-old artist to be at death’s door, defeated by disease and circumstance. She is, after all, putting on an exhibition hardly anyone will see: “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open.” All she can hope is that the gallery will open in December, but that is uncertain.

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