Summer Exhibition part 2 - architecture

This is the 2nd part (of what I have now decided will be three) blogs about the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This blog will talk about the architecture exhibits.  Sort of anyway.  It will cover those and vaguely related pieces.

I am, not that interested in architecture as a subject. I like pretty buildings, I like drawing them but the subject of architecture is not something that particularly grips me. It was my impression last year, re-iterated this year, that the architectural exhibits at the Summer Exhibition are among some of the most artistically interesting, well conceived and technically excellent pieces in the whole show.  You have good drawings, paintings, photographs, plans and sculpture. Here are some of my favourites.  

Left is Anja Kempa's Library of Memories.  This is an interesting piece because it is an example of a great work of art enhanced both by its title and the context in which it is exhibited.
It is a giclee print of what was presumably originally an etching.  The edition of 25 is sold out, evidenced by the savage array of red dots at the base of the piece. 
As you can see it is a very complicated fantasy landscape in Japanese style with mysterious hanging objects and a scaffold like super structure that makes me think the whole thing is contained within some large atrium.  It is a piece that grabs you from a distance and rewards concentrated examination as more and more detail appears.  It had made my pre-list from perusing of the RA Website  and was much, much more impressive in person.
The fact it is in the architecture section and its name conjours up thoughts of some strange superstructure in which memories can be accessed and displayed.  It is a beguiling thought.  

It is called Pleasure by Annie Cattrell and is primarily resin.   The picture here is quite good but these are three dimensional objects and reveal different things as you wonder round looking at them from different angles.  I like very much the suspended golden amberish globules.  I also like the refracted light and views you can see (and the photograph shows quite well) through the pieces. They seem very tactile and it is a shame you cannot handle them.  You will have to fork out £20,000 (for 1) for that pleasure.

Avocado Coconut Egg by El Anatsui is not actually in the architecture section.  It is a sculpture made of aluminum and cooper wire and is in my view one of the best sculptures.  I put it in this section because it seems to me to have a very architectural quality.  It reminds me of an upside down city or a certain type of sci-fi floating city.
What the photograph doesn't convey of course is the textural quality of the piece.  It's difference surfaces and qualities.  You cannot buy it. It's not for sale.  

CJ Lim's  Vision of Food parliament (Aerial view).  It is a digital print.  I like the bridge that stretches across and frames the whole piece and the odd square gridding and pyramid structures.  The main benefit of viewing this in person is it is much larger.  Again it is a piece enhanced by the name.  What is the food parliament? Are the wasps attacking it or is this their home we are viewing.
It is deceptively simplistic piece that rewards continued viewing.  This and conjectures as to what are going on are things I enjoy in art.  Incidentally I don't actually care what the artist intended as the interpretation and, I think, neither should you.

 I have put these two together, Callum McLure's Hobby House and Ripples (far left) and If_DO's Joseph Walsh Studio do in very different way similar things.  They present dreamy enticing images of a planned space.  One can in each one feel the atmosphere of what it would be like there.

Mobile Studio Architects' Planning Permission Granted is an excellent example of art working also as superb advertising.  The idea is very simple it is map (of London) with small models of houses for which they have received planning permission.  It says very boldly, look this is what we can do.  It is fun to look at and attracted a lot of attention with people peering at it.  This kind of thing only works when the concept is rendered as well as it is here.  It's good.  It's fun. 

This is a shit photo of what is an excellent piece of sculpture, namely Mohammed Jubri's House of Flying Optics.  Good name.  What this photo stunningly fails to show is, well frankly anything that makes the piece good.  For this reason it didn't make my pre-list but it person I love it.  Spiky gantry's brass and perspex and odd angles.

For reasons I am unable adequately to explain these two are linked in my mind.  The far right one is Neil Spiller's Longhouse Site Plan Sketch.  Gold! Close scrutiny reveals a sort of plan but it is not really a plan, it is more the idea of a plan that glows out to you across the room.
I suppose it might be the glow that links it with Will Alsop's Heliport Height.  What is not in the picture is that the actual sculpture is lit internally with small lights and this, combined with the fact that it is actually placed against a dark wall gives it a nice glowing quality that shows that purple plastic and bronzey finish to its best advantage.  I like the shape too.  Reminds me of Tracey Island somehow.

Niall Mclaughlin Architect's Bishop Palace at Auckland Castle.  Never mind an architectural rendering it works very well as just a painting.  I like the perspective and the use of colour.  I particularly like the trees, differently sized baubles on slender trunks.  I can't quite place it but there is something very familiar and comforting about the style.
It's a good design they've got there, the Palace.  Nice vaulted glass structures.  They have made it fir very well into that landscape.

Peter Cooks' Waterside workspace is a strange riot of colour and shapes.  It is a very large piece and I was surprised it was not getting more attention from the milling throng.  It is a very different offering from everything else in that architectural space. 
I enjoy the animal, bird and butterfly like shapes the romp through it.  The boats strangely almost spoil it.  The way it does work though it the whole things look like an odd iceberg that these interloping vessels have encountered.

The above are all works of professional people presumably working in a sophisticated way in a sophisticated environment, many of them as part of a team of people.  It is perhaps not surprising they produce works of such quality.  There is a much more commercial feel to them, which is odd as many of the pieces are not for sale where as the rest of the exhibition are.  They say very boldly as succinctly, look, this is what we can do. Come and commission us.  They are to modern day architecture what the still life was to the dutch masters. I shall leave you now with one of my favourite pieces from the rest of the exhibition.  It is a made from wool being a work in felt, the only example of such in the whole place.  It is called Frosted Woodland and is by the very talented Bridget Karn.