RA schools party ’26

RA schools party 26 – better than last year! And a better show. Each year a handful of students graduate from the Royal Academy Schools in Piccadilly, continuing since the establishment of the RA. These annual soirees allow us to take stock of our legacy and celebrate new talent.

The RA schools were set up to train professional artists, at a time when craft was as much part of the process as is will, affect and passion. Today’s graduates have a completely different remit; as Eliza Bonham Carter said in her peroration, ‘it’s about the long term’ – how experiences at the schools contribute to the creative voyage of each person who (once upon a time) entered the fabled blue door.

This year’s exhibition served as back-drop for reconnection across the decades. It was harder to find time to view artworks because of increased social intercourse. Within the show there seemed to be a general emphasis on the very substance of the place. Robert O’ Leary’s tableaux consisted of a cast made from the floors (in part).

A blur between the utilitarian and the ethereal seemed to echo about. Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell decided to leave screws in the walls of her space and chose to expose a heating or drainage pipe.

Together, Stephen Duncan and me admired the work of Dwayne Coleman – which we thought outstanding. His careful assemblages play with concepts about surface, texture and the material of painting, plus many other things.

He gives a nod to painterly representation in ‘Flooded Garden’ but taunts gallery-goers with a folded inner tube, lodged high up in his exhibition space – a sort of utilitarian departure.

Djofray Makumbu makes a great show of Afro-Caribbeanism, celebrating chroma to some extent, but the eyes of his models seem to lack expression, as if it were the same individual each time. Life drawing could add more intense control in this respect.

Francisca Pinto gestures at drawing, with numerous studies laid on a floor, tastefully tinted with Farrow & Ball-esque colours.

Mohammed Adel pushes misty, uncertain figuration. A suite of dark paintings lurk silently, as if cloaked with abayas, asking us to ponder their mystery. Would he dare to use colour? or load the surface with a gooey fudge of impasto?

Giving the darkness 3D form, Georgia Kerr’s giant tusk has lasting visual clout and presence; in an attempt to escape Miss HerNia in the life room one passes through darkness, finding the route to the back studios has been bricked up (more utilitarianism and fabrication) by Zacharia Riley.

Not to be perturbed, I made my way to the place where Mike Upton once talked about evening classes at St. Martins in the 1960s.

Explaining how Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossof applied paint using builder’s trowels – perhaps Mr. Riley could have learned a thing or two? David Smith, pre-Greenham era! joined the dots and gave a brief explanation of what it was like when Auerbach taught him life drawing.

In the few hours spent there I didn’t see the whole show. Lolly Adams’s piece in ‘Some Other Version’ consisted of organic, anatomical references – which struck a chord. Previously I worked as a medical illustrator, drawing from dissections and at an earlier stage, harvested cabbages. I guess I can relate to her humorous fripperies and watched a bit of the film shown in the life room – some spangly tart chasing a giant bollock about a sewer. Hmm. David Cockney is just as good.

As for messing with the fabric of the place, many of us think: leave it alone. One alumnus called it vandalism. The great success (and failure) of these gatherings is: ex-students bother to come, swapping anecdotes and stories about their own experiences, creating a rich tapestry of learning and survival which might be of use to future generations. This gets extemporised in a roving after-party throughout the pubs of St. James’s – then it’s all over and we disperse into the glitz of the West End for another year.

Ms Bonham Carter’s speech emphasised: attendance at the schools is still free. Back in the day grants for the humanities came from the tax-payer and no-one escaped the mandatory year of life studies, which made a school of the place. A sort of conditional freedom.

Two Stephens collided at the RA schools party ’26, both made sculptures at bronze foundries in Italy, quite separately from each other in space and time. Where else would there be such a coincidence?

Thanks to staff at the RAS for organising the RA schools party ’26

Photos by Alan Dedman and Christie