Focusing exclusively on his paintings, this exhibition surveys Ed Ruscha’s career from the late 1950s to recent works. Ruscha’s overarching theme is words and their constantly shifting relationships with context and message. In all his paintings there are tensions and frictions at play: between foreground and background, between text and image, and between how words look and what they mean.
14th June – 22nd August 2010 in the Main Galleries
Installation view of the Lecture Room, Summer Exhibition 2009
The Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition. Now in its 242nd year, the exhibition continues the tradition of showcasing work by both emerging and established artists in all media including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film. This year’s co-ordinators, Royal Academicians Stephen Chambers and David Chipperfield, will select works for the exhibition around the theme of ‘Raw’.
The Summer Exhibition attracts a high volume of entrants each year with over 11,000 entries this year. The majority of selected works will be on sale, offering visitors an unrivalled opportunity to purchase original artwork by high profile and up-and-coming artists.
As is the custom the exhibition will feature work by Academicians and Honorary Academicians and include new work by artists such as Antoni Tapies, Ed Ruscha, Michael Craig-Martin, Gillian Ayres and Tracey Emin.
Following on from last year’s successful BBC TWO Series Culture Show special on the Summer Exhibition, the Royal Academy of Arts is delighted to be working with the BBC once more.
