Scottish artists get Olympic showcase in London

The Royal Academy of Arts summer exhibition in London dates back 244 years, and boasts art sales of £3 million to about 150,000 visitors. This year more than 11,000 artworks were submitted to the show’s selectors, and about a tenth of those will find their way onto walls and rooms of its Piccadilly galleries.

But for the first time this year the leading Scottish artist Barbara Rae will oversee a dedicated room for Scottish and Irish artists. The list of Scottish names is topped by Alison Watt, who will show two major paintings, while artists including Callum Innes and Sean Scully are also on the list.

“Due to their location, I feel Scottish and Irish artists are under-represented,” Ms Rae said. It was “a practical problem”, with issues running from transporting work from outside London to the fact that Scotland and Ireland both have their own academies with artist members.

“The intention is to help establish a greater diversity of art work exhibited by the Royal Academy of Arts in London,” she said. Sculptor Kenny Hunter, whose recent work includes a 7ft high bronze sculpture of a mouse for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire, will submit a plaster miniature of the mouse – along with a life-size skeletal sculpture representing Scotland’s mix of “science and superstition”, he said.

“It’s a first time for me. The exhibition is a big part of the British art calendar, with a traditional kudos, it may be not cutting edge but it’s quite democratic. The great and the good and the hobbyist are all hung in the same show.”

The Royal Academy show is an open exhibition where any artist can submit a work. But major artists already on the list this year include academicians Tracey Emin and her fellow ‘YBA’ (Young British Artist) Michael Landy. Most of the pieces in the exhibition are for sale.

Several major Scottish artists are already academicians - elected members of the Academy – including painters John Bellany and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, the architect Ian Ritchie and the sculptor David Mach.

But Ms Rae will include work by herself alongside other major names from Scotland’s art world, such as John Byrne, Alan Davie, Will Maclean, and two young artists Euan Gray and Calum McLure.

“Obviously, I admire the work of those chosen, and hope to encourage the youngest by promoting work I think intriguing, whilst saluting the oldest such as Alan Davie, a prominent artist when I was a mere student,” she said.

The organiser of the summer exhibition, Edith Devaney – co-curator of its recent David Hockney blockbuster – said: “This is a different dimension to the summer exhibition. Barbara, as one of the committee, asked at the beginning if she could have permission to do this, because she’s very well connected to the Scottish and Irish art community. She voiced her interest and everyone agreed that it would be interesting.”

Barbara Rae, CBE, is a former Edinburgh College of Art student who went on to lecture in drawing and painting at Aberdeen and then at the Glasgow School of Art for 20 years until 1996. Her work is held in collections world wide.

Her show will give a particular focus to Scottish art schools, reflecting her own teaching work, said Ms Devaney. “She has a sense that Scottish and Irish trained artists are more traditionally painterly, in an art school system which has a greater stress on drawing and observational study.”

The exhibition runs from June until the last day of the Olympics, 12 August, and is traditionally already crammed with visitors walking through its 13 rooms. “What’s really nice about this year is it coincides with the Olympics, and we are expecting a different audience demographic,” said Ms Devaney.

Alison Watt, OBE, saw her work included in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this week after a 1986 self-portrait was bought for the gallery by the Art Fund charity.

“I’ve been invited, several artists have been invited to have a room during the summer exhibition. That should be quite interesting,” she said.