Review: Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2025

RBA Annual Exhibition 2025: East Gallery

This is one of my very analytical posts - for an important reason. The story unfolds below....

Last Tuesday I was at the extremely well attended Private View of the Royal Society of British Artists.  It was very pleasing to see a much better mix of members and open artists work aross all three galleries at the Mall Galleries. (for how to visit, see below)

This is my review of what I found. My guess is there may well be a significant post mortem after this exhibition. For a number of reasons.....

• the size of the Exhibition
• Initial Sales - a variation on "less is more"?
• Social Media Marketing
• The Private View

with another more generic post tomorrow about Private Views and another post on Wednesday about the art that I liked, where it will get highlighted more than in this already long post.

Yesterday, I went back to take more photos, as the galleries had become too crowded before I'd finished on Tuesday. A second visit after the PV also offers the chance for another and much better look at the exhibition.

 

Facts about the exhibition

There are 554 artworks hung in the show split between:

• 275 artworks by members
• 279 artworks by open entry artists

I applaud the RBA for achieving a 50:50 split in terms of artwork hung between member artists and open artists. That's a significant achievment and is also the mark of a "proper" open exhibition.

The artwork selected comes from 3,843 submitted images. To give you a sense of what that represents it's bigger than the entry for some major art competitions. There's a lot of younger people who now want to show with the Royal Society of British Artists. There's also a lot of people who would like to get their hands on some of the very significant cash prizes.

Artwork at the entry to the West Gallery

You can see the exhibition at the Mall Galleries ( in The Mall in London)

• Open every day (10am-5pm)
• Exhibition Finishes: Saturday 8th March 2025 at 5pm
• Admission £6, Free for Friends of Mall Galleries and under 25s. Concessions available. No booking required.
• Catalogue is available at the Gallery - or you can view it online
You can also see the artworks in the exhibition ONLINE via
• the Mall Galleries Shop website shop - 60 artworks to the page + you can see the media used easily
• The Royal Society of British Artists website

I will also be uploading my photos of the three galleries to my Facebook Page in three seperate albums for the West, East and North Galleries.

RBA 2025
End "Feature" Wall in the West Gallery 

The Size of the Exhibition

Mostly I found, as I usually do, a very wide range of styles and media used in paintings, drawings, printmaking and sculpture. There's probably something for everyone.

Mostly it was good work, although it certainly included artwork I personally would have edited out at the selection stage.

The thing is I'm experiencing real difficulty conjuring up the exhibition in my minds eye.

I can do it if I look at my photographs - but I normally don't need to do this

I have the sort of brain which remembers good exhibitions extremely well. I can walk around them in my head. I can remember exactly where certain paintings I like are situated - and what artwork is near it. I can remember that for a very long time afterwards. For some exhibitions I can do the walk around in my head somes months and even years after the actual exhibition. 

So to have difficulty recalling more than small sections of the exhibition causes me concern. 

I came to the conclusion that I was faced with VISUAL OVERLOAD.

So some facts:

• This annual exhibition has 554 artworks in the show  - that's nearly 70 artworks more than in 2023 when RBA achieved very impressive sales.
• I actually cannot remember the last time I've seen an exhibition with more than 500 artworks in the show
• EXCEPT I checked back with the catalogue to see how many they hung and it it was 503! Except my review last year indicates that there were 495 artworks in the show - and I'm not sure how the discrepancy arises. The difference might relate to obituary/tribute hangings of work not for sale(?).

Anyway, in this exhibition these are the numbers of artworks by media or form

• Acrylic (74)
• Egg Tempera (3)
• Gouache (3)
• Mixed Media (37)
• Oil (226)
• Pastel (17)
• Pen & Ink (15)
• Pencil & Charcoal (16)
• Print (69)
• Sculpture (52)
• Watercolour (30)

There's a LOT of sculptures in the exhibition.
This is distributed around all three galleries but most is in the East Gallery

The coherence with which work was hung varies from wall to wall and gallery to gallery. I was pleased to encounter a wall dedicated to various takes on how plants, flowers and fruit can be portrayed

"The Flower Bay"
in the West Gallery

Initial Sales - a variation on "Less is More"

I'll be commenting after the exhibition closes on sales and how well the exhibition has performed. However, it's typical for most sales to come in the first week.

However my initial impression yesterday, when I could see both artwork and red dots more clearly, suggested that sales were not numerous.

So I did a count, just to see if my impression was correct.

39 are sold as of Monday afternoon (i.e. 7% of the show). I can identify what media and forms have sold and these are shown in the table below

(For reference to sales in recent RBA exhibitions:

• in 2024, the RBA sold sold 52 (10% of the artwork hung) - which was poor compared to
• in 2023, the RBA sold 97 out of 487 hung (ie. 20% of the artwork hung)

Bottom line - I think that if:

• the Selection Panel had been MORE selective (aiming for say 450 hung)
  
• and fewer works were hung, 
• those exhibited would get a better chance to shine and 
• hence RBA might achieve better sales.

I also really do NOT like artwork which is too hung too high or too low - and there's lots of this in this exhibition.

Note: I'm not sure as to why some artwork has not been identified by media but the total is short of the 553 hung. Does nobody reconcile figures from one way of counting to another? Speaks the ex-qualified accountant....

What I find very interesting is how 

• about half the exhibition comprises oil paintings and 
• yet so-called "lesser media" appear to maybe proving to be more popular when it comes to sales (eg 6% of oil paintings have sold compared to 33% of gouache paintings)
• it also appears to me that media used more often for drawings or sketchy paintings are doing well eg gouache, pencil and charcoal, pastel, watercolour
• even pen and ink is beating oil paintings!

My obvious conclusion is that this is very probably related to pricing as oil paintings tend to cost more and the so-called "lesser media" tend to be priced less.

So yet again, we come back, yet again, to the issue of affordability and how pricing needs to take account of this (see my posts

• Pricing your art for Open Exhibitions - a review of a sample of exhibition metrics for 2024
• RBA Annual Exhibition 2023: Analysis of art sales metrics & Recommendations about pricing artwork

What I do know is how the sales analysis works at Day 7 (see below) and it is illuminating and I'm sure RBA members will want to ponder on this.

Open Artists have sold double the number of artworks sold by RBA members. Normally one can explain figures away by open artists mostly selling in the two lowest price ranges - and member artists selling for higher prices.

However, on this occasion ONLY open artists have sold in the "more than £2,500" price range.

It remains to be seen whether current trends will continue...... I will be returning to this topic!

Social Media Marketing

My initial conclusion is that maybe the number of sales is related to a combination of:

• hanging too many artworks (see first section above) 
• the LACK of social media marketing by the RBA.

Here's the current state of play on RBA Accounts(for the ones I use and can check easily).

• the RBA Facebook Page is DEAD - one post in January and the previous one was in July 2024. The RBA needs to take account of the fact Facebook is very popular with the age group which tends to attend the Mall Galleries Exhibition (i.e. middle aged, middle England on middle incomes) 
• RBA Instagram account: I know there have been problems with this  i.e. "we got locked out of the old one" - but it could be more active at the present time
• RBA Twitter - no tweets since August 2024
• RBA Bluesky (i.e. where all people who have quit Twitter have gone) - 3 posts when the account was set up - and none for six months

If I were the RBA, I'd start doing some proper social media marketing PDQ this week!

The Private View

I'm writing a second post tomorrow focusing more generically on the Private View. 

The Private View of the RBA Annual Exhibition 2025
- BEFORE it became too crowded

I personally found the Awards Ceremony went on way too long. (Some 35-40 minutes). That's partly due to the fact that:

• the RBA has a number of generous cash awards for its exhibiting artists
• a number of these had the award size split so that more than one person won (which to my mind is not OK - you have to deliver what you advertise - and I mean legally!)
• it's very difficult for people to move through a room when it's very crowded.
• a new President - and the first annual exhibition you do is always a challenge.

For me, the approach used appeared to display a total lack of awareness that 

• most of the people in the room are NOT there for the Awards Ceremony or the speeches - unless you've nabbed a star of the stage or screen (I well remember the year that the SWLA managed to get David Attenborough to open the exhibition - see If you want a lot of people at the Private View......)
• most of the people were STANDING (i.e. this is not an after dinner event!)

Keeping people of mostly middle age and older on their feet standing still for half an hour is NOT something that's very popular. 

• I ended up sitting on the stairs and needed somebody's help to get up!

By way of contrast, I rejoiced at the way the awards ceremony was conducted at the recent Pastel Society Annual Exhibition 2025 due to the President having devised a way to raise the profile of the artists with those at the PV and at the same time getting through the Awards in the fastest time possible. It was absolutely amazing and I wholeheartedly commend it to ALL other FBA Presidents!

I do sincerely hope that the RBA will next year follow the excellent example set by the Pastel Society and speed up the whole process.

So, what next?

• Tomorrow a generic post about the purpose of Private Views and who should attend and when
• Wednesday: I'll be focusing on the artwork I really liked
• In about 10-14 days time, I'll be doing the final wrap up on the Exhibition Performance Metrics - focusing in particular on sales - and naming those artists who did particularly well!