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Mixed blessings

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy, until 17 August

Sculpture and sculptors’ drawings feature in Gallery IX: here are Nigel Hall (fresh from a signal success at Yorkshire Sculpture Park), Ivor Abrahams and a series of powerful charcoal drawings by William Tucker. The Lecture Room seems to be dominated by columns and lumps, the latter prevailing (W. Tucker again, and Tony Cragg). Richard Long contributes an extensive row of floored and sharp-ended slates, Phillip King a strange wall-rack in pink, green and yolk-yellow. The Central Hall is disappointing apart from a group of glowing coloured reliefs by Ken Draper and some sharply effective wall sculptures by Ann Christopher. We don’t need to see Jeff Koons at the RA, the space his ‘Cracked Egg’ took up could be better used.

Gallery X has been hung with more traditional art and was therefore, of course, packed, since that’s what people come to the RA Summer Exhibition to buy. Here are such old favourites as Freddy Gore and Anthony Green, some lovely Leonard McCombs (including ‘Cyclists by the Sea, Cyprus’), bracing green landscapes by Ben Levene and a couple of powerful Anthony Eyton canvases. Particularly memorable is the big night interior of his studio, a gloriously complex still-life. Jeffery Camp contributes five new oddly shaped pictures, ‘Red River Thames’ being especially eye-catching. Below, a subtly painted sculpture by Neil Jeffries makes an eloquent companion. On the way out is one of Simon Palmer’s exquisite watercolours and a powerful abstracted landscape by Derek Balmer, ‘After Rain’, its forms slightly melted, rather as I felt after the onslaught of this vast mixed blessing of an exhibition.