Cathy's Art Diary

Confusing exhibition at the Royal Academy, one of a series of three showcasing the work of 2nd year students in the schools. I have found all these shows annoying for the lack of information about the work. It’s often conceptual in nature and needs some explanation. It might cope with that if it was beautiful but on the whole it hasn’t been. This one took the biscuit as they had run out of the handout, not that it is that useful, so I didn’t even know which work was by which student. By checking the website I think I worked out that these striking paintings are by Djofray Makumbu and that possibly the small model is for an animation and is therefore by Zachariah Riley but if so it might have been nice to see one of his animations to put it in context. As for the other work presumably by Katrina Cowling and Joshua Fay who knows which was which. I rather liked a mechanical wave of corn which I thought was quite witty and the fact the arch of the staircase had been encased in fabri...

Novel exhibition at the Royal Academy showing the work of three of the Royal Academy Schools students. Lolly Adams, Djofray Makumbu and James Sibley explore “staging through methods of set building, costuming and moving image production” according to the blurb. I must admit a lot of the blurb was pretentious and incomprehensible like “Presented here are fragments of the narrative vehicles in which each artist escapes across the causeway, towards finished work.” Please teach students to present their work in a simple way. Looking at the handout since I realise the random old phone in the floor was a soundscape by Djofray Makumbu. It would have been used to have a label on it to encourage its use. That said I liked Lolly Adams bits of costume design and animated avatar wearing it but my favourite was James Sibley’s recreation of the cupboard under his grandparents stairs created to the size it appeared to him as a child. Closed 3 November 2024