Call for Entries - Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2022

Next March, The Royal Society of British Artists will be having their Annual Exhibition - and they'd like you to enter your art! 

This post is about their Call for Entries

• Entries opened today Monday 11th October 2021
• The deadline for entries is Friday 10 December 2021 - by 12 noon
• For full terms and conditions, click here.

and covers

• the exhibition in 2022
• cash prizes and awards
• who can enter
• what you can enter
• how to enter

The Royal Society of British Artists invites painters, sculptors and printmakers to submit their work for consideration to be shown in the Society’s Annual Exhibition 2022. As well as skill and draughtsmanship, they will be looking for originality and creativity.

RBA Annual Exhibition 2022

The exhibition is being held at the Mall Galleries - between Buckingham Palace an Trafalgar Square - and 

• opens on Thursday 3 March, 10am to 5pm before 
• closing on Saturday 12 March, 5pm

It's a large exhibition which is normally held over all three galleries.

I very much recommend aspiring artists have a go at this one. 

• If an artist's artwork is good, he or she has have a decent chance of getting selected compared to some other open exhibitions and art competitions. 
• There's a tremendous variety of artwork on display in terms of subject matter, style and media used. 

Note that in 2020, I commented that the exhibition was worth visiting because....

the fine art prints - which are simply STUNNING. This exhibition is worth visiting just for the prints alone!

the 3d work and sculpture which is numerous and very varied. The range of media and diversity of approaches is amazing. 

The diversity of styles and media used for drawings and paintings. While some is still traditional, the diversity of styles mean that this exhibition has well and truly lost the air of "fuddy duddy" which it had in 2012.

the hang which is excellent - a huge exhibition remains accessible (apart from the labels - see the end). I very much appreciated the theming of different works - the still life at the entrance, the trees in two different places within the exhibition etc.

the size of the exhibition. They've selected 500 works in total - of which 20 relate to their RBA Star Students. Some of the paintings are hung in 3 rows - but they can cope with it as all remain accessible

Some of the prints in the RBA Annual Exhibition 2021

 

Cash Prizes & Other Awards

This year's exhibition had some extremely impressive artworks which won prizes. This a link to the artworks which won prizes and awards at the Annual Exhibition in 2021.

A variety of Prizes and Awards are on offer. The total prize pot is worth over £5,000

These include (subject to final confirmation):

Cash Prizes

• The de Laszlo Foundation Prize: The de Laszlo Medal for Excellence and £1,500 will be awarded for the best artwork from life by an artist aged 35 or under
• The John Lynn Commemorative Award for a Young Artist: £500
• The Surgeon's Prize: £500
• The Peter Kelly Commemorative Prize: £300
• The Ronald Morgan Memorial Award: £250
• The Gordon Hulson Memorial Prize: £250 for draughtsmanship, variety & exploration
• The Stuart Southall Print Prize: £250
• Nathan David Award for Sculpture: £150
• The Geoffrey Vivis Memorial Award: £100

Publication Awards

• The Artist Magazine Award: The winner will be interviewed in The Artist magazine, print and digital editions
• The Dry Red Press Award: The winning work will be published as a greeting card in the Dry Red Press 'Prize Winners' range, with royalties from the sale of the cards going to the artist

Art Materials & Other Awards

• The Winsor & Newton Painting Award: Art materials to the value of £500
• The Michael Harding Awards: Two awards of 
• £500 worth of Michael Harding art materials, and 
• 10 painting starter sets
• Hahnemuhle Fine Art UK Award: A prize of artist paper, worth £250
• Frinton Frames Award: £200 of picture framing at Frinton Frames bespoke handfinished picture frame makers

Submitting an Entry

Portrait Artist of the Year 2021 starts 13th October 2021

I was thinking the other day that now is the time of year when it gets dark early and once a week I settle down to watch Sky Portrait Artist of the Year.

...and so it has come to pass. Book your armchair for next Wednesday night at 8pm on Sky Arts!

Last year it looked like we might only get Portrait Artist of the Week - as filming was originally due to be held during lockdown - but they managed it in the end. Ditto this year, filming has also taken place - again within constraints - so no audience. But this year Joan Bakewell is back - thank goodness!

Check out the sitters in this year's series in the following video

Dates for your diary

The Judges:
art historian Kate Bryan, artist Tai Shan Schierenberg
and independent curator Kathleen Soriano

• a new series of Portrait Artist of the Year 2021 will start broadcasting on Sky Arts (Channel 11 on Freeview) next Wednesday 13th October 2021. It's also broadcast via the streaming service NOW. Which means block out 8pm for the next 10 Wednesday - that's 8 heats, one semi-final and one Final. 
• plus Landscape Artist of the Year will also return in early 2022 - as per normal. My guess would be this will also be Wednesday starting around the second week in January....

The Sitters

Two sitters - and no arty party backgrounds!

Sitters in the series are:

HEATS: 

• singer / songwriters: Gabrielle; Celeste
• Actor: Philip Glenister, Kelly MacDonald, Lydia West, Hugh Skinner, Daniel Mays, Emma Dabiri, Sophie Cookson, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Polly Walker, 
• Comedian:  Nish Kumar; 
• TV Presenter: Alexa Chung, Gyles Brandreth, Chris Packham, Grace Neutral, David Olosuga (who all do other things as well)
• Author/Journalist: Alistair Campbell; Ian Hislop; 
• Paralympian: Ali Jawad
• Dancer: Arlene Phillips, Sergei Polunin
• Scientist: Maggie Aderin-Pocock 
• Conductor: Karen Gibson  

SEMI-FINAL: Nick Mason (Pink Floyd)

FINAL: to be revealed - probably in the first show!

The Episode 1 sitters are Gabrielle, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Grace Neutral - and I'm obviously completely out of the loop as I only recognise one of those names.... (and don't recognise a number of the other sitters either!)

CATCH UP

This is my blog post about the Call for Entries: Portrait Artist of the Year 2021 (Season 8)

You can catch up on

• previous series on Sky Arts
• my blog posts under this label portrait artist of the year

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp down - what did it mean for artists?

Is it time to think about whether your art business is independent of social media - or too dependent on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp?

Facebook Outage on Downdetector

I'm guessing that quite a few businesses around the world are reassessing how they do business on social media after the major outage for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp yesterday. 

3.5 billion people/companies were left twiddling their thumbs - and inspecting Twitter and Downdetector on a regular basis!

hello literally everyone

— Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021

Of course once upon a time, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were three separate entities - but if anybody needed telling they all belong to Facebook, they'll know full well after yesterday. (Instagram was acquired in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014).

For lots of people their whole business model lost its profile on the internet - and associated sales.

Bear in mind previous outages lasted not much more than an hour. As we went past the two hour mark, it was very apparent that what had caused it was really serious AND they didn't know what hd happened and how to fix it. The corollary of this is that next time it could be days.....

There's quite a few artists reappraising how they use social media to market their art on the internet after yesterday. 

Such as Jim

Plus there's quite a few articles pondering on what happened and whether it was a bit of a wake-up call.

Here's some of them - which you can read at your leisure.

• Are the arts too reliant on socials? | ArtsHub (Australia) - which HIGHLIGHTS the Pros and Cons of the different social media platforms - and why you need a presence if you want to promote your art online.

As the internet went into panic and outage memes showered Twitter (one of the only social platforms still working), users were left re-thinking their daily reliance on social media accounts.

Over the past decade social media has transformed the way artists interact with each other and their audiences. It’s opened a wealth of opportunities, and platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become essential spaces for emerging artists to share and sell their work.

But this relationship between art and social media is complicated. Why? Because art pushes the boundaries, and social media enforces them.

• Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Suffer Worldwide Outage | Billboard - which highlighted the implications for whether this mega social media group can be allowed to continue. Right on top of allegations that Facebook has complete disregard for the harms that some of its products can do to some of its users. My expectation is that this incident will have rollout and repercussions which Facebook might not like....

It also showed that, despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can truly replace the social network that has evolved in 17 years into all but critical infrastructure. Facebook’s request Monday that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services seemed to ring a bit hollow.

More generic (non-art specific) comments on the outage came from the better known publications - in print and online.

• Gone in Minutes, Out for Hours: Outage Shakes Facebook | New York Times - which comment extensively on the much wider implications for how the lack of the platform impacted in very many different ways

“Today’s outage brought our reliance on Facebook — and its properties like WhatsApp and Instagram — into sharp relief,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. “The abruptness of today’s outage highlights the staggering level of precarity that structures our increasingly digitally mediated work economy.”

• Facebook is back online after a massive outage that also took down Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus | The Verge - which comments extensively on what happened to employees INSIDE Facebook!

Inside Facebook, the outage has broken nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work. Several employees told The Verge they resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts, though employees can’t receive emails from external addresses. Employees who were logged into work tools such as Google Docs and Zoom before the outage can still use those, but any employee who needs to log in with their work email was blocked.

• Facebook is down – but you can still get your misinformation fix | The Guardian - some truisms and some good jokes!

and finally......

• Facebook down: Zuckerberg apologises for six-hour outage | BBC News

Facebook has said it is working to understand what happened so it can "make our infrastructure more resilient". Tech experts have described the issue as being akin to the social media giant falling off the internet's map, so it could not be found.

The company said there was "no evidence that user data was compromised".

The outage comes at a particularly difficult time for the company, which is finding itself increasingly under pressure over its reach and impact on society.

RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show - extended until 9th October 2021

This is a summary of the blog posts I've written recently - on my website Botanical Art and Artists - about the RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show 2021. 

This show normally lasts for 2 days in one of the RHS Horticultural Halls in Victoria - and attracts exhibitors and visitors from all over the world. 

Featuring more than 200 of the best botanical artwork and garden photography by 34 global artists, all competing for an RHS Medal.

Last year - like many other annual exhibitions - it was cancelled.

This year, it had to change the way it worked - and moved to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea - for three weeks. It was initially two weeks but the show has been extended to Saturday 9th October.

These are my blog posts reviewing the medals awarded, the two shows and the changes in 2021 - and what needs to happen in future - in reverse chronological order

• RHS London Botanical Art & Photography Show - Pros, Cons and the Future
• Review: RHS London Botanical Art Show​
• Review: RHS London Portfolio Photography Show 
• RHS Botanical Art Awards 2021

You can see views of the Installation - in three galleries - at the Saatchi Gallery here

I'm really pleased that the RHS managed to get an exhibition up and running despite the many very significant challenges. 

However the show was VERY quiet and there were no artists - or as one visitor put it

A very different venue to the usual Lindley Hall and the exhibits looked very good in the setting. Missed the atmosphere though, along with chatting to the artists and more information provided about each exhibit.

I think it's a big mistake to consider this show to be an exhibition - as opposed to an EVENT which includes an exhibition.

 

Or as I said in my overview post

My main concern for the future is that the RHS gets back to remembering that this is NOT JUST AN EXHIBITION!

This is very emphatically an EVENT i.e. PEOPLE (not just artwork) come too, to:

• meet up with other botanical artists and photographers
• talk to the people exhibiting 
• talk to one another - many make plans to meet up with people from all over the country and have lunch or dinner afterwards
• sell (and buy) artwork, prints and cards
• network, network, network to plan future projects, exhibits etc

It's this networking and making connections aspect which helps raise the standard of botanical art. It's hugely important to the wellbeing of the genre.

Note the difference between the Installation Views - and photos in my posts and this video of the show in the Lindley Hall in 2017

For all those who follow Botanical Art 

• you can subscribe to my Botanical Art and Artists New Blog - find out how to subscribe to my regular updates on this page.
• you can follow daily updates on my Botanical Art and Artists Facebook Page

Recommended Read: Hockney on Abstraction and Cezanne's Drawings

David Hockney has written an article for The Art Newspaper called Why abstraction has run its course

It's well worth a read - because yet again Hockney highlights some issues which make you think again about what you know and have seen.

This is the exhibition of Cezanne's Drawings - which he references in the article. 

I've always been a huge fan of Cezanne's watercolours - more so than his other paintings. 

The article certainly made me stop and think and go and look at Cezanne's watercolours again.....

I have just received the very beautiful catalogue from MoMA on Cézanne’s drawings. It’s an excellent book I can recommend to anybody. All the pencil drawings of the small sculptures that he made and owned have a great grasp of chiaroscuro, but I notice that in all the watercolours of still-lifes, landscapes and skulls, he takes away the shadows. They are ravishingly beautiful. I know I am the only one saying all this, but I firmly believe my observations are true. My friend Charlie in New York had sent me the catalogue and seen the show. I then told him about the shadows and what I had observed, and it made him go back to see it again.

Paul Cézanne. Forest Landscape. 1904–06.
Pencil and watercolor on paper, 18 5/8 × 23 5/8″ (47.3 × 60 cm).
Private collection

Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Cut Watermelon (Nature morte avec pastèque entamée). c. 1900. Pencil and watercolor on paper, 12 3/8 × 19 1/8″ (31.5 × 48.5 cm).
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel. Beyeler Collection.
Photo: Peter Schibli

This led in turn to me taking a closer look at the exhibition which has just finished at MoMA in New York. 

• This is the Catalogue of Cezanne's Drawings. You can read an extract from the catalogue online
• This is a video of the Exhibition of Cezanne's Drawings

More articles, images and videos about the exhibition include:

• Installation images - 96 images Plus you can see more images from the exhibition via a MoMA Query
• A Guide to Cézanne’s Mark-Making and Materials - Explore the artist’s visual vocabulary through a detailed look at his techniques.
• Kiko Aebi on Paul Cézanne’s Foliage - A watercolor from the turn of the 20th century straddles the line between abstraction and representation.