Royal Academy Summer Show 2025 – fine art from feathers, matchboxes and more united with dialogue
By James Brewer
Ingeniously pairing dynamic contemporary art with eco-friendly architecture is a critical achievement of the Royal Academy’s 257th Summer Exhibition, thanks to its imaginative coordinator Farshid Moussavi and her panel of curators.
That simple but bold approach was exactly what the summer show needed to apply extra polish after some rather unadventurous outings in recent years.
Formally, the 2025 celebration of creativity and support for the artistic community is themed as Dialogues. That arises, explains co-ordinator Moussavi, from the recognition that we are living through a time of increasing polarities – social, political and cultural. Her aim is not to dwell on division, but to be inspired by art’s capacity to forge dialogues about concerns such as ecology, survival, and the ways in which we live together.
Architecture for the first time in the show’s long history is interspersed throughout the halls with the artworks, instead of being confined mainly to one room, and thus no longer of being at risk of neglect by visitors. Although the balance might sometimes look less than spot-on, the great success is making the displays seem fresh and complementary rather than isolated. Given that there are in all 1,729 works, a figure whittled down from the 18,000 submissions, this is some feat. It helps, mostly, that lesser-known artists have the chance of appearing at least this once within the firmament of distinguished Royal Academicians, who are entitled to submit up to six works, with the rest coming from people invited by the committee, and external entrants.
Don’t expect a huge number of dazzling individual accomplishments in the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show; just swim in the sea of everything on display (on the walls up to almost ceiling height), which as ever includes a carnival of styles spiced with wild cards. The ‘conversations’ between artworks are the thing, argue the curators.
The unpretentious Farshid Moussavi, an Iranian-born British architect who graduated from the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, the UK’s largest and most multidisciplinary such hub, is acclaimed for buildings including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio, a six-sided pavilion covered in mirrors; and the huge, futuristic Yokohama International Ferry Terminal, which is integrated with adjacent parkland.
In this show she is able powerfully to put into practice her conviction that architecture has a place alongside fine art in exhibitions. She has been quoted as saying that for instance a van Gogh show could explore the architecture of Arles, the French town where from his rented Yellow House, the unrivalled genius created some of his greatest works.
One of the first spectacles for visitors as they enter the Royal Academy’s new show is a 6 m high metal installation sporting large ostrich feathers, entitled Body Shop, by London sculptor Alice Channer. This shop is not a retailer of cosmetics but is of the type that is part of a plant for assembling vehicle frames. The feathers, from the female of the avian species, are part of an industrial system of discs used to clean car bodies. They are supported by laser-cut, mirror-polished steel chain.
Another surprise that no-one could miss is a playful, large-scale installation by Ryan Gander, a Suffolk-based practitioner who describes himself as “as a sort of neo-conceptual no-style-style amateur philosopher.” Outside the RA building, in its Annenberg Courtyard, are five 3 m diameter inflatable balloons made from black PVC. There is another one temporarily intruding into the central hall, wedged in the doorway to another gallery. The spheres seem to be swapped about between specific points, though. All are inscribed with questions of the illogical kind that young children might ask. How Much is a Lot? What do Animals Dream of? and so on. It is seen as a nod to society’s insistence on having definite answers to everything. You might want to ask a different question: how much it would cost to buy one of these large orbs. The answer is that they are listed at £60,000 each.
Antonio Tarsis, born and raised in the city of Salvador in the northeast of Brazil, has made Storm in a Teacup especially for the show. This is a 4.5 m high, and 7 m wide wall made from old matchboxes. He picked up the boxes from the streets of the favelas (slum districts), attracted by their purple colour, and how their shades varied after being exposed to sunlight, to rain, and the open sky: this was “a kind of natural painting.” The matchboxes are of the Guarany brand, the name of an ancestral Indigenous people. “My work consists of connecting all these references, subverting the meaning and form of these objects,” Antonio has said.
Throughout the exhibition, look up at works suspended from the ceiling. Hanging above everything and everyone in the largest gallery is an installation that at first looks gruesome. Argentine American artist Tamara Kostianovsky makes combinations of recycled textiles – many from her own wardrobe – look like animal carcases and hangs them on hooks and chains. Tamara, who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, when a child became familiar in her father’s surgical practice with blood, fat, and skin, and she also remembers butcher-shop meat. Now her sculptures are meant to address the environment, violence, and the mechanised systems of consumer culture that dominate production in the United Sates.
New tech has not intruded much into the big picture here, but AI certainly has a footprint.
Contributing to that is Liron Kroll, a London-based visual artist and art director, celebrated as she says, “for her unique integration of photography, photomontage, animation, AR (augmented reality), and AI technologies.” She presents a portrait of her sister entitled Memory Seed to which there are photography, AI-generated elements and digital painting; edition of 18 at £1,950. Elements are digitally layered from “countless” photographs, constructing “new realities that reveal deeper, often unsettling truths.”
Meanwhile, “a polemical architectural designer and theoretician,” London-based Nigel Coates, submitted two dual variations (watercolour and print) captioned respectively AI or Drawing?_Sheffield Museum and AI or Drawing?_Body Zone. He invests architecture with semiotics, craftsmanship and contemporary culture. “Whatever the space or the object, Coates will fill it with passion, irony and instinct” is his undertaking.
Emily Allchurch presents an archival print mounted on aluminium from her series The Six Seasons (after Bruegel). Six? These are counted as winter, early spring, late spring, early summer, late summer and autumn, as in a commission from Bruegel the Elder for an Antwerp merchant in 1565 and now Emil’s inspiration for digital collages of thousands of contemporary photographs. For the Summer Show, she chooses the winter (!) image, but the point is that by recreating Bruegel’s paintings, she looks at the central theme of the Seasons – man’s relationship to nature and the land – and asks what has changed in the intervening centuries, and what has stayed the same.
Winter is the best known of the series, and a favourite over many years for Christmas cards. Its title Hunters in the Snow records the harshest winter in a period of intense climate change known as the Little Ice Age. It illustrates, despite the hardship resulting from bitterly cold conditions and food shortages, man’s ability to endure and to find joy, evident in the games played on frozen rivers and ponds. Emily gathered photographs for the project not from Flanders but from English landscapes on the South Downs.
Two entries separately illustrate the traumatic journey of migrants who take to the seas in the hope of realising a stable life in safe lands. An oil painting by Adam Forman entitled History in Transit shows more than 40 of the109 haggard, life-jacketed African migrants crammed together after being rescued by the Italian navy in October 2014. The work of the artist, a former Sheffield GP, is based, with permission, on a photo by Lynsey Addario, an American photojournalist noted for covering conflict and humanitarian crises on assignment for The New York Times and National Geographic. It recalls a similarly themed photo included in several publications, including as illustration for an article in The Times of London on May 7, 2025, about UK immigration policies.
On a smaller scale but just as moving is Migrants, a reduction linocut, by Sarah Smart, pitifully showing half a dozen refugees huddled in a very small dinghy.
Dame Tracey Emin’s blue-hued depiction of The Crucifixion is dripping in anguish. One of the two thieves crucified with Jesus is controversially portrayed as a woman, inconsistent with gospel texts. The frankly spoken Dame Tracey has said that she is not religious but paints a crucifixion every Easter. A long-term supporter of the RA, from 2011-13 she was professor of drawing there.
Veteran Royal Academicians continue to win admiration for their paintings in their trademark styles. A couple of London centenarian Anthony Eyton’s oils, both called Outside The Door, soothe the viewer with luxuriant vegetation presumably seen in his own garden. The artist has been a great traveller, but always returns to his home in Brixton, London. He has exhibited at every Royal Academy summer show since 1978.
Philip Sutton, now in his nineties, is another summer show regular. Born in 1928 in Poole, Dorset, he grew up in the East End of London and has lived in Wales and Dorset but frequently travelled abroad. An example of his flair with vibrant colours is his new oil painting Flowers that give Delight.
Architects and designers featured include JA Projects with a large steel sculpture which was part of the UK contribution to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Twin pans represent both Trinidadian steel drums and Cypriot cooking traditions – two rituals that have influenced the life of the firm’s founder Jayden Ali – and two pastimes that evolved from colonial influence. At intervals, visitors are invited to administer a give the pans a hearty whack.
A 6 m high multipurpose roost for wildlife, designed by London practice 51 architecture, is on view in the RA’s Lovelace Courtyard. This is representative of one of the firm’s specialities “architecture for other species” which are adaptable site-specific proxies for habitat creation and restoration.
A maquette of the School in the Valley of the River Goris for the Children of Armenia Fund is shown by Gumuchdjian Architects, a firm founded by Philip Gumuchdjian after working for the Richard Rogers Partnership for 20 years. The site is 235 km from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and 67 km from the regional centre Kapan. Of the model, in brass and cardboard under the title of Suspense, Trans-Caucasian Trail, Armenia, the firm says: “Part public viewing platform, part educational facility, part landscape regeneration, the project uses architecture to spearhead social and environmental renewal… This dynamic space is not just a building; it’s a catalyst for the valley’s further growth, including the ongoing renovation of the local stadium and the transformation of public spaces.”
A galaxy of Honorary Royal Academicians includes Marina Abramović, El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, William Kentridge, Mimmo Paladino and Kiki Smith. Royal Academicians include Rana Begum, Frank Bowling, Grayson Perry, Lubaina Himid, Cornelia Parker, Veronica Ryan, Conrad Shawcross, Yinka Shonibare and Rose Wylie. The late Royal Academicians Norman Ackroyd and Timothy Hyman are memorialised.
Raman Srivastava, chief executive of main sponsor Insight Investment, said: “This enduring cultural event consistently challenges and provokes thought. This year’s theme invites us to reflect on how art serves as a medium for exploring new ideas and highlights the transformative potential of dialogue and cross-disciplinary collaboration.”
Most of the works are available to buy. Sales directly support the exhibiting artists and the RA’s charitable work, including training at the Royal Academy Schools.
Captions in detail:
History in Transit. Oil on linen. By Adam Forman, after photo by Lynsey Addario.
Migrants. Reduction linocut. By Sarah Smart.
The Six Seasons – Winter. Archival c-type print mounted on aluminium. By Emily Allchurch.
Outside the Door No 1, and Outside the Door No 2, oil paintings. By Anthony Eyton.
Body Shop. Ostrich feather car body cleaning discs; steel. By Alice Channer. Exhibited courtesy of Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Los Angeles. To the left: When do you know you’re right? PVC and ink. By Ryan Gander. In background, through the arch: Storm in a Teacup by Antonio Tarsis. Photo © David Parry/Royal Academy.
Gallery view, including JA Projects steel pans (upper right) and in middle distance Alice Channer’s Body Shop, and Storm in a Teacup by Antonio Tarsis. Photo © David Parry/Royal Academy.
Eighty of the exhibits – on just one section of wall.
Suspense, Trans-Caucasian Trail, Armenia. Brass and cardboard maquette. Gumuchdjian Architects.
Flowers that give Delight. Oil painting. By Philip Sutton.
AI or Drawing?_Body Zone. Watercolour and print. By Nigel Coates.
Vitamin SeA, screenprint and relief print. By Janie Robinson.
Viewing Tamara Kostianovsky’s recycled textiles exhibited courtesy of the artist and SLAG & RX, New York and Paris. Photo © David Parry/Royal Academy.
Summer Exhibition coordinator Farshid Moussavi, with Andrea Tarsia, RA director of exhibitions, in the background.
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is open until August 17, 2025.
