Huma Bhabha’s Ghost of Humankindness (2011)

  She uses the materials of our troubled era to create work that is resolutely, and resonantly, of our time.[1] Courtyard Sculpture Each year a sculpture is placed in the Annenburg Courtyard heralding the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition.[2] This year, 2023, Huma Bhabha’s Ghost of Humankindness (2011), may perhaps be inadvertently overlooked through elegantly blending into this capacious greige location. The sculpture stands offset before Alfred Drury’s garlanded, lofty statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the first President of the Royal Academy founded in 1768.[3] As a sculptor, Drury was ‘always in search of the graceful, the…

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Slim Aarons’ Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc (1976)

As summer approaches, this appraisal of the American photographer Slim Aarons’ iconic 1970s image of the exclusive swimming pool and clientele at the Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc on the French Riviera, reassesses its historic perspective. ‘Slim was an anthropologist with his camera. He documented an entire era.’[1] Aarons’ Aesthetic Slim Aarons’ Leica camera captured this evocative image at exactly 4.30 p.m. on a soporific summer’s afternoon at the Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc. [2] A privileged international jet-set of about thirty, sun tanned, white people lounge around this mesmerising scene. The only person fully dressed is the pool attendant,…

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The Heritage Register: Artworks, Industrial and Marine Fittings Around St Katharine Docks

This Heritage Register is provided for those who may have a commercial, cultural, or historical interest in St Katharine Docks, London. The structure of the report includes a brief history of the docks and provides a register of artefacts, industrial and marine fittings which have been indexed because they are essential to the integrity of this environment and witness to the docks’ architectural, cultural and social development. Moreover, they create the visual narrative of a historic working docks, now as a contemporary arena for the local community and visitors. Featuring the art work of: Dale Devereux Barker; Arthur Fleischmann; Paula…

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The Recycle Group:
from f to futurology

The Recycle Group recently presented the finale to the Royal Academy’s History of Sculpture Course (January to March 2019). Locating their contemporary work within an art-historical context this article connects previous artistic pioneers with these twenty-first-century innovators. Few artists have captured the twenty-first-century consumer zeitgeist with as much curiosity, cynicism, and success as Andrey Blokhin (1987-) and Georgy Kuznetsov (1985-); the duo known as the Recycle Group. From the foundations of their childhood friendship, European cultural family holidays and mutual attendance at the Academy of Industrial Art in Krasnodar, Russia, Recycle Group has offered a sophisticated visual commentary upon modern…

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‘Reforming Academicians’, Sculptors of the Royal Academy of Arts, c.1948-59

PhD Thesis Abstract Post-war sculpture created by members of the Royal Academy of Arts was seemingly marginalised by Keynesian state patronage which privileged a new generation of avant-garde sculptors. This thesis considers whether selected Academicians (Siegfried Charoux, Frank Dobson, Maurice Lambert, Alfred Machin, John Skeaping and Charles Wheeler) variously engaged with pedagogy, community, exhibition practice and sculpture for the state, to access ascendant state patronage. Chapter One, ‘The Post-war Expansion of State Patronage’, investigates the existing and shifting parameters of patronage of the visual arts and specifically analyses how this was manifest through innovative temporary sculpture exhibitions. Chapter Two, ‘The…

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