\n An image of the 200th RSA Annual Exhibition, with a work by Jake Harvey in the foreground (Image: JULIE HOWDEN)\n<\/p>\n
\n Time as it relates to the flesh and to human mortality rather than to continental drift or glacier movement isn\u2019t ignored. No wonder, it\u2019s a long-standing subject for artists \u2013 indeed the creation of art is in many ways a bid for immortality, futile though that is.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alison Watt packs all this into her painting Vanitas, a three-quarters profile portrait of a gleaming white skull on a light grey background. Calum Colvin, with his genius for combining visual trickery and powerful imagery, comes at it in The Mask of Keats I. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse goes the saying: the poet John Keats managed two out of the three, though his death mask shows a 25-year-old face ravaged by tuberculosis. Not so pretty.\n<\/p>\n
\n Meanwhile Ken Currie offers up Ferryman, a huge, dark canvas showing a typically ghostly figure standing in a boat with his face half-obscured and an oar upright in his hand \u2013 Charon, presumably, who plied his trade on the River Styx which separates the living world from the world of the dead in Greek mythology.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ranged across seven galleries upstairs, five more downstairs plus the echoey Sculpture Court, this 200th annual exhibition offers a snapshot of the best new work by the Academicians. And quite a picture it is. Masterfully hung and arranged, there\u2019s a real rhythm to it if you journey through gallery by gallery. But if you want to just jump around from big to big name as the mood takes you, they\u2019re all here. As well as those already mentioned you\u2019ll find Adrian Wiszniewski, Barbara Rae, Wendy McMurdo, Callum Innes and Toby Paterson, to name just a few.\n<\/p>\n
\n Read more Barry Didcock<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n \n Even the members elect whose work is included are well known names who have been exhibiting widely and to great acclaim for decades. Among them are Moyna Flannigan, Jim Lambie and Ross Sinclair. A slightly facetious point, perhaps, but couldn\u2019t we also consider the workings of the RSA committees within the context of geological time, so slow is the pace at which artists are accepted into the fold? Then again, the ongoing, nationwide RSA 200 celebrations do reveal an organisation willing to engage with the public and to promote Scottish art and Scottish artists with no small amount of energy (and, it should be noted, cash in the form of awards, grants and scholarships).\n<\/p>\n \n Also in that list of members elect is Julie Brook. Her set of four large photographic prints on paper are one of the most startling works in Gallery One, powerful and enigmatic images of flaming firestacks burning in high stone circles as the sea swirls around them. Count the elements: they\u2019re all here.\n<\/p>\n \n Other potential crowd-pleasers include Stephen Skrynka\u2019s sculpture Unconformity (he has taken off the wooden frame from a Morris Traveller, the iconic 1970s estate car, and decorated it with glass and mixed media) and the whole of Gallery Five and the downstairs Finlay Room, both a riot of colour. Also Leila Galloway\u2019s site-specific Hebaska And Sound Solid Liquid Light for which the artist has dressed the two main Sculpture Court columns in sheer organza fabric in shades of green so they look like tall, spectral figures. Met Gala, eat your heart out.\n<\/p>\n \n \n Skyrnka, meanwhile, is one of five artists invited by the organisers to respond directly to the exhibition\u2019s theme. Among the others is Sam Ainsley, who has designed the banners for the Grand Portico at the RSA\u2019s Princes Street entrance. The image also features on the catalogue cover.\n<\/p>\n \n But away from the large or particularly eye-catching works are many others which reward those gallery-goers who give close scrutiny to everything, even the small stuff. Take Jim Lambie, for instance. He raises a smile with Star Dancing, a modest-sized sculptural piece mounted low on a wall and made up of 50 or so coloured lenses from sunglasses held together in a lead frame. It looks like an explosion in a sweetie factory.\n<\/p>\n \n There\u2019s subtlety too. One of the most beautifully understated works (and a highlight for me) was a hand-printed silver gelatine photograph by Thomas Joshua Cooper. Taken at Point Dume in California at nightfall on Advent, Cooper used a three hour exposure to capture a bewitching image of a tiny Crescent Moon trail in a sea of inky black. If you want to ponder solitude and the ineffable, you know where to stand. If not, no matter \u2013 there\u2019s something for everyone in this huge and inspiring showcase of Scottish art.\n<\/p>\n \n Barry Didcock is an Edinburgh-based Herald writer and freelance journalist specialising in arts, culture and media. He can be found on X at\u00a0@BarryDidcock<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So in the year we celebrate the organisation\u2019s longevity and the glorious, solid sandstone edifice which is so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-952466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116555624393254140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Finlay Room installation view, from the RSA 200th Annual Exhibition (Image: JULIE HOWDEN)\n<\/p>\n