2016 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Welcome to this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

For three centuries, this event has celebrated

the genius of artists from Turner to Tracey Emin.

And this year's show promises to be even more ambitious than before.

There's beauty, there's tragedy and there's technical wizardry.

Coming up...

We'll be talking to the sculptor Richard Wilson,

the man taking on the huge challenge of organising the Summer Exhibition.

What I'm really after is to have a "wow" factor in every room.

We'll meet and play with the key artists of this year's show.

Go on a shopping spree with two celebrity art lovers.

We'll experience the highs and the lows of those aspiring artists

who have submitted their work to hang amongst the greats.

And hear ABC bring their art-pop to the Royal Academy.

It's a very chic crowd,

and that kind of suits ABC all these years on.

The Summer Exhibition is now a firm fixture of the social calendar.

But the show actually begins a few months earlier,

when the RA opens its doors to people of all backgrounds and ages...

My picture of a multicoloured bird that I drew in pastel.

..to have their work judged by a panel of esteemed artists.

It just gives an opportunity for anyone in the world to be

hung in the most beautiful art gallery in London,

I would say, yes.

It's nervous, yeah. It's quite an imposing building, isn't it?

We are going into the tradesman's entrance, though.

This year, 12,000 people have submitted their work digitally.

They were then whittled down to approximately 2,000 hopefuls,

who have been invited to drop off their work.

It's then an agonising few days before they find out

if they're either in or out.

I'm really happy, and praying.

If I got in, I would probably...

nothing crazy, have a cup of tea and a sit down, read a good book.

Many of the artists entering may be largely unknown.

My painting is of Colonel Gaddafi.

I've been painting a series of dictators for a number of years.

He looks a little bit like a camp airline pilot.

But that doesn't prevent the odd celebrity amateur from showing up.

It's great fun.

And you can dream for a moment that you're an artist and then,

when you do get in, it's just fantastic.

You can stand behind people slagging off your painting

because theirs didn't get in.

That's good, that one. I like that one.

Last year, Harry Hill's portrait of Damien Hirst was successfully hung.

But will sticking to famous faces pay off this time around?

Well, I've brought along this one. It's called David Beckham Diptych.

And it's basically the national treasure David Beckham.

I'm envisaging him with his tattoos of crazy golf courses.

I don't know if you know the crazy golf course in Herne Bay?

It's a very good one. No windmill, unfortunately.

-That's what that's based on.

-Do you fancy your chances this year?

Not really, no.

Amongst those dropping off their work is 69-year-old Janette Byrne.

This is the one

-when you've gone in and they go...

-GASPS

I mean, you know, even my son's heard of it

and that's saying something.

Janette lives in Bolton and came to art later in life,

after a career in teaching with young offenders.

When we were all made redundant from the Prison Service, I was

at a loose end.

Got quite depressed actually, not knowing what to do with myself.

And sitting down to do some art gave me a focus. It was fantastic,

absolutely saved my life, I'm sure it did.

As a mature student, Janette had a creative, as well as emotional

breakthrough, with the discovery of long-forgotten family portraits.

There's my dad. Look at that. That's going to be a painting.

I found the photographs and then started working from them.

But they also triggered memories, you know - the child who's

never smiling, the dominant father, the submissive mother.

It all fit in when I looked at the pictures.

To resolve her past, Janette re-imagines the family portraits

by first building up layers of detail

before removing everything but the merest trace of the original image.

I've got to the stage now where I can completely make a painting

and scrub it all out.

And I like the effect, because the memory's gone and that helps.

Not very pretty, is it?

Cleansing, isn't it? Washing is cleansing.

Those are the cleanest canvases I've ever done.

The Royal Academy is like the best feedback you could

have from anybody, to be recognised as being worthy.

If I get in, it's champagne, lots of phone calls.

And if I don't get in, it's gin and tonic.

Another artist dropping off her work is Rose Blake.

Rose is an illustrator based in London.

I'm working on a children's book at the moment.

The main character that talks you through the book is basically a kid version of me.

She says she wants to be an artist.

Last year, she began making artworks inspired by her

passion for nosing around museums and galleries.

I find it really weird calling it art. I call it pictures.

I suppose, though, the illustration work,

there's always a kind of starting point that isn't necessarily mine.

I'll get a kind of brief and then my main thought is,

"How am I going to communicate this?"

With the pictures that I make,

it's a lot more about just, like, letting myself go.

I love it. I always have clients, all the time.

It's so nice not to have a client.

That's the main purpose of it, basically.

Artistic talent runs in Rose's family.

Her father is legendary pop artist Sir Peter Blake.

Yeah, I'm really inspired by him, yeah.

He's 83 this year, and he's so enthused by everything.

It's precisely the anonymous nature of having work

judged for the Summer Exhibition that is so appealing to Rose.

They like it and they say yes, or they don't and they say no.

And there isn't that thought of,

"Oh, that's a picture by Peter Blake's daughter."

Rather ingeniously, Rose is submitting two works to

the RA which both depict a scene that will be familiar to the judges.

I went to the Summer Exhibition

and saw that pink room that Michael Craig-Martin had curated,

and just was just completely blown away by it.

So, they're two drawings, both based in that big, pink room.

Hopefully it'll catch their eye, because they'll remember it.

Also entering two prints are duo Janet French and Emma Buckmaster.

We've done everything we can.

They're going to be on their own now.

At their studio in Suffolk, Emma and Janet print woodland scenes

onto paper made from the leaves of the trees being depicted.

That's going to be good.

We both collect the leaves.

-We normally say we need a thousand leaves.

-Yeah, at least.

We're like bag ladies going round with bags full of leaves.

Ow!

We're so lucky to be able to do something we really love doing.

Not everyone can say that, can they?

-Not everyone has the chance to express themselves.

-Yeah.

For Emma and Janet,

the print-making studio has become a sanctuary.

When we're working together, we have to be quite frank

with each other about what's happening in our own lives.

I might tell you things that I wouldn't tell anyone else,

because it's so important to our mental wellbeing and calmness.

If I'm tense, I can't work. And the same with Janet.

This is the moment of truth, has it worked or not?

Yes.

Despite their apparent calm, the pressure is on.

Tension's mounting now, isn't it?

Because it matters so much, that you can't really not think about it.

It can just change everything overnight, really,

because it takes you from sleepy Suffolk to suddenly the big time.

We'll be catching up with all our hopefuls later in the programme.

Each year, one of Britain's leading artists takes

control of the Summer Exhibition.

This time around, that honour falls to a sculptor who just loves to

take people's breath away.

Richard Wilson has a unique, creative mind, with a genius for

dazzling artworks that have a dose of old-fashioned British humour.

He paid homage to the Michael Caine film,

The Italian Job, in Bexhill-on-Sea,

and poured gallons of oil into a room at London's Saatchi Gallery.

So, Richard Wilson is a sculptor who loves spectacle.

But I don't think ever before I've actually got to interview

a sculptor in one of his own creations.

So, here I am on the River Thames and I'm about to go into a ship,

but this isn't any old ship.

This is a slice of a ship.

Welcome aboard.

Slice of Reality was created by Richard for

the 2000 millennium celebrations,

a witty and poignant reminder of the Thames' declining maritime prowess.

I like the idea that captains and pilots and seamen and seawomen

would be coming up the Thames and think, "Am I seeing things?"

Well, it's certainly an extraordinary thing to see,

and most people, when I used to be onboard, working,

would walk by and say, "What is it?"

I'd say, "It's a slice of a ship," you know, because it is!

When you were asked to do the Summer Exhibition,

what was your first thought?

I mean, were you excited? Or was it a workaday thing? What did you want to achieve?

I thought it was a great privilege to be asked.

I do know that there had been thoughts that perhaps

I could do it a year or two ago, and I'd said I was too busy.

And this year, I thought about saying I'm too busy, because I was.

I tried one or two excuses just to test the water, to see

if I could get out, and I couldn't.

So, once you make the commitment then you're committed. You have to do it.

So, what was the idea?

How are you going to approach every different space?

Well, I think there's a sense of the wow factor.

I mean, I have depended, through my own work,

on the notion of spectacle.

That can be a dirty word in the art world with certain people, certain artists.

But it's something I quite like. I like

that wow factor that you get,

and then you have to digest the wow factor.

You have to think, "Why was the hair on the back of my head tingling? What's going on?"

Then you start to engage.

But you need that moment where you draw someone in.

So I started to think every room had to be a different experience.

So, here we have you, the artist, and the Royal Academy exhibition,

what do you think about that?

It was a great privilege to be invited to be this year's coordinator

and to be part of the tradition,

this great cultural tradition that takes place annually,

every summer, hopefully in good weather,

and it's a grand cultural occasion in...

OK, very much in London. But it's international.

It seems to capture people's imagination.

-They want to know about it.

-And you get to do it.

And you get to sort of have a say in it, yes.

With my friends, the Beatles, try with a little help from my friends.

It's crunch time back at the Royal Academy, as judging begins.

Just call out yes or no, I mean, if anyone wants...

Not for me.

Yeah, definitely.

-It's nail-biting stuff...

-Yes.

..as every work of art goes before a distinguished team of experts.

Yeah.

All that separates being in or out is a single

yes from one of the judges.

-No.

-Yes.

-Yeah? OK.

Judging works of art for the Summer Exhibition may be

an exhausting process. RICHARD SIGHS

However, being judged is even harder.

This year alone, over 11,000 will have their work rejected,

a morale-sapping rite of passage, shared by artists through history.

Even from the very early days, in the 1770s,

we know that pictures were being rejected.

There wasn't enough room on the walls to hang everything,

so this idea of selection, of filtering grew.

We know that Edouard Manet was rejected,

because he wrote about it in a letter to Baudelaire.

Even Constable, he got rejected

when he was actually sitting on the selection panel.

This is a rejection letter from 1935.

It's Stanley Spencer, who was a member of the Academy,

but that year's submissions hadn't gone too well.

He'd sent his six pictures and three were rejected.

He's taken this, quite reasonably, very badly.

He says, "If by doing this you wish to show me you could have

"what pictures of mine you liked and not what you did not, I will take

"care you never have another picture of mine so long as I am alive.

"If it is your idea to tease me, by hanging onto these pictures

"and to make me unhappy by doing so, you are succeeding in doing so.

"Do please, please, let me have my pictures back. I want my pictures."

And at the end of all of this he just puts, "Please excuse pencil."

Janette, Rose...

Oh, my God.

..and our duo, Emma and Janet, are about to receive

an e-mail from the RA informing them if the judges liked their work.

If successful, they're still in with a chance of getting their work

hung at the Summer Exhibition.

COMPUTER CHIMES

Oh, here we go - Summer Exhibition.

"Thank you for entering this year's Summer Exhibition.

"With almost 12,000 entries, the competition was extremely strong...

"I am pleased to inform you...

"Your artworks are still under consideration."

LAUGHTER

"..is still under consideration."

Amazing!

The way it's worded makes you think that you haven't got through.

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

-I can't believe that.

-I can't believe it.

I think we'll have to read it again.

"You will receive further notification on the 28th of May."

What's that all about?

I don't know what to say.

I've only rehearsed, in my own mind, the not getting through.

Champagne, I think, yeah. And not go back to work this afternoon.

Oh, my God, that is so good. Wicked!

Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

I hope this is the good stuff.

One of Richard Wilson's big ideas for the Summer Exhibition is

to feature artists who work not by themselves, but in a pair.

Making a work of art can be intense. Is it harder or easier

when you're dealing with not one artistic ego, but two?

-How was that, Kirsty?

-Pretty good, maybe one more.

HE SIGHS

In the world of comedy,

music and sport, the idea of a duo feels just right.

# It takes two baby

# It takes two baby

# Me and you... #

But less so in art.

What's your favourite TV programme?

Songs Of Praise.

Creative double acts, like Gilbert & George,

seem the exception rather than the rule.

And the RA has historically not allowed artistic duos to become members.

I've been a campaigner for bringing duos into the RA.

In 1984, Gilbert & George won the Turner Prize

and there wasn't a debate about it.

It was like, two people can win the Turner Prize

and the RA is a little bit backward in that way,

with that thinking. Should we address it?

So I put together a duo show.

Now, the idea of the duos isn't that I want to corral them

and make them sort of an oddity.

You know, "Look at them all - the duos."

The idea is to spread them right the way through all the rooms.

So, this year's show will feature some of the most exciting

artistic duos working today.

The worst thing about cameras in the studios is then you have to

act at being an artist.

-This is more like The Two Ronnies, they used to sit on chairs like this.

-The Two Ronnies.

Husband and wife, Ivan Morison and Heather Peak,

live in a remote and sedate part of Herefordshire.

And in this pastoral atmosphere, the Morisons

create work that is clever, disturbing and often magical.

We're very, very different to each other, and it's between those

two differences that all this work is made.

We don't agree on lots of things.

And it's a real kind of challenge and a real pleasure

to work in that way.

Their work is all tinged with dark humour,

like these fake personal ads.

Another ongoing series involves sending postcards from different

parts of the world that play with the idea of being a married couple.

People who don't know what they are, they can seem like it really concerned them.

A question about who sent this. "What do they want of me, really?"

That's what a lot of people ask of those sort of things.

This one says, "It got to the point where I just had to get out,

"that's when I built my first escape vehicle."

That's from Los Angeles, California.

This one says, "I used to love her, but look what she's done.

"I hate her, I hate her." That's from Tasmania.

LAUGHTER

These postcards give you little glimpses or hints into quite

what's happening to us and to the world around us

and the things that we're working on at the time.

I think something interesting about working in a partnership,

is how intrigued people are about that relationship, what is that?

And I think it's quite irresistible to play on that.

Over in East London are another artistic duo whose work

and lives couldn't be more different.

Noble and Webster's art is often created out of junk,

transforming base material into bracing sculpture.

Being in a duo, you feel that you don't need the rest of the world

because it's you two against the rest of the world, if you like.

With a collaboration, you get contradictions.

You end up doing things that you wouldn't necessarily do.

You just come up with ideas and the two of you bounce those

ideas off and, before you know it, they're set into place.

It's a belief system.

I guess there was one point, because we were both using the same hair dye, whereas...

You almost become the same.

You have the same thought, don't you?

Noble and Webster are famous for their haunting shadow sculptures,

and these works have now taken on an extra dimension.

We were very much together when we started out making them,

but when you look back at them now, you can see,

instead of those two figures being joined together,

those are two figures that are actually not facing each other any more.

Having been a couple since the late 1980s, Noble and Webster now

live apart, but they still collaborate as an artistic duo.

If two people have had a very, very intense relationship,

and I think it was quite intense,

obviously it was full of pleasure and it was full of magic and...

it's an amazing life story.

But when you, sort of, say, "Well, how long is forever?"

Forever does come to an end sometimes.

The dynamic's changed a little bit

because, of course, we're not living and working together any more,

but we still, when we do meet up, we still feel that there's,

you know, there's ideas that still need to be pursued.

When two people come together, there is a greater force.

But, in a sense, being in a show,

it connects, you have to connect with people.

People have that ability and the artwork to make it

transcend into, like, a bigger possibility, don't they?

So, really, if Sue and I kind of drop dead tomorrow,

it's about the artwork, isn't it?

Jake and Dinos Chapman emerged out of the '90s Britart explosion,

their work straddling the fine line between the horrific

and the hilarious.

Everything on here's been touched by Jake and me with a paintbrush

and a glue gun.

With these hands.

Even though Dinos recently moved to America, the Chapman

partnership still continues to challenge the art establishment.

Deciding to work together was less to do with the choice

dictated by being siblings than it was to do

with identifying with each other's ideas about art.

If anything, the dynamic of being brothers just merely makes

the hostility towards each other a little bit more sort of

bearable, and any argument can always be arbitrated by our mother.

The Chapman brothers have always enjoyed the unease that being

an artistic duo can provoke.

The idea of the intimacy with a singular relationship between

one artist's work and one viewer has a kind of intimacy and a proximity,

and an authenticity to it, which is kind of broken by the notion

of you standing in front of something made by more than one person.

You don't know who you're talking to when you're looking at the work of art.

So, it's not surprising that a kind of phobia to duos persists.

At one point, Dinos was offered membership of the Royal Academy,

but Jake was not.

I mean, I did sort of say, if they're going to be that

sort of squeamish about it, why don't they give Dinos an R

and I can have an A?

You know? I'm not even sure how it actually came to him,

but I told him if he took it, I would sue him.

-And I'd break all his work.

-LAUGHTER

The courtyard installation at the Summer Exhibition is

one of the great artistic commissions of the year.

In 2016, the honour goes to a true maverick of the art world.

All of these objects are by Ron Arad,

whose work has always defied categorisation by the critics.

Ron Arad's sculptures and one-off commissions,

made in everything from highly polished steel to car seats

found in scrapyards, have seen him celebrated as one of the most

creative minds working in Britain today.

Arad has been based in this studio in North London

for the past 25 years.

It's a place humming with creativity and Ron's work.

Ron has always advocated the importance of mixing work with play.

-Why is the table bent?

-It slows the game.

Yeah, it feels pretty fast to me!

Like this...

'And he can't resist showing me some of his more fun designs...'

It's like a matryoshka.

'..including these 3D-printed vases and lights.'

'This is the model for the work he's creating for the courtyard

'of the Royal Academy.'

Can I just make sure I'm pronouncing it right. It's Spyre, isn't it?

I'm sure your English pronunciation is better than mine.

Spyre, it's just like a church spire, but we change the "i" to "y"

because it has a camera here and it "spies", so to speak.

Normally, you look at sculptures,

but this sculpture also looks back at you.

It needs very clever mechanical engineering

and it needs a lot of knowledge that I don't have.

They make it in Holland by some shipbuilders.

People can look at this moving

and they don't have to worry too much, "How does it do it?"

"How does a television work?" You know, it just does it.

The camera at the top of Spyre will record people coming into the RA and

then broadcast their images online and onto the front of the RA itself.

Spyre makes me think of two things - the first one is CCTV,

but also internet surveillance, people looking at what's happening.

Yeah, but at least it's not hiding.

At least it's standing in the centre stage of the art world.

But do you feel like you're drawing attention to that state of affairs?

Look, you can never control the use or the interpretation

that your work will induce.

It's a very, very heavy piece of steel and then it

sort of moves gracefully, and I hope it will cheer people up.

A couple of weeks before the Summer Exhibition opens,

Ron is on site at the Royal Academy to supervise the arrival of Spyre.

This is some bird shit - excuse my language.

And the show's co-ordinator can't resist having a sneak peak.

When it came, it was full of bird shit.

I love prints.

This is a great moment, to be lived with an animation

that we did for so long.

This is life imitating art, if you want.

You'll see Spyre in its full glory at the end of the programme.

And inside the Royal Academy,

the rest of the Summer Exhibition is starting to take shape.

The Marina Abramovic to be hung over there.

-And your predecessor, Michael Craig-Martin.

-Yes.

-This is a pretty hefty piece.

-He's been rather naughty.

He's exceeded the size limit.

So, give me an idea of where you are now in terms of the hang?

-Yeah, in full chaos.

-LAUGHTER

I'm not an expert on how to hang a show.

It's the diversity that is my problem because, not only do

you have these wonderful large works, you have much smaller works.

You have abstract work, you have figurative work.

It's very difficult to find the right combinations to make each work

have its own territory and hold the presence in front of an audience.

And your hair's still a normal colour, it's not grey.

-No, I'm getting thinner!

-LAUGHTER

One of the highlights of last year's show was Jim Lambie's

colourful transformation of the Royal Academy's grand staircase.

But this year,

Richard Wilson has given this spectacular space to a duo

who create complex and brooding art.

This is a CGI rendering of what Jane and Louise Wilson

plan to display on the walls around the staircase.

A series of large-scale prints from their photographic series, Atomgrad,

showing the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The Wilsons work in a non-descript industrial estate in London.

These twins create photographs

and films that often depict the most traumatic events of the Cold War.

People have a preconception about the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,

champagne, strawberries, all this kind of stuff.

How do you think the public will respond to your staircase?

Well, people come expecting to be challenged,

presumably, as well, and to be, you know, they find art challenging.

And it is challenging, hopefully.

Could it go wrong? Could it have everybody going back out the door?

-I think they might well not go back out the door, they might just run.

-LAUGHTER

MUSIC: 99 Red Balloons by Nena

The Wilsons are drawn to places that are haunted by the ghosts of history.

For Stasi City, they were granted unique access to the old offices

and interrogation rooms of the East German Secret Police.

We are looking at sort of fairly banal office interiors,

and even the interview rooms that were probably actually really

a site of terror for people who were held, because they were

political prisoners, you look at these interview rooms

and you think, actually... You know, these double padded doors with net curtains.

So, there was this concession to humanity, but in actual fact,

it really has this sort of theatre.

And I think there is something about that, that we

definitely were fascinated to kind of document somehow.

It was over a period of many trips that we went there,

and gradually it became a way of being able to locate keys, being

able to open doors, being able to go through into separate spaces that

hadn't been processed, hadn't been looked at, hadn't been opened out.

That is so interesting, because essentially what you were having to do was negotiate with people

that you must have known were probably former Stasi officers.

Well, that was the curious thing, it was like having someone

inspecting you while you were inspecting it.

The sisters' curiosity took them to another Cold War landmark,

the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,

a place they documented in the film The Toxic Camera.

2016 is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown,

and the Wilsons feel it's timely to display their photo series

Atomgrad in the Royal Academy.

You come across as incredibly

-funny, warm, joie de vivre, optimistic.

-Yes.

-Positive.

You're going to ask why we were photographing in Chernobyl.

I'm going to ask you why you're drawn to territory which is

much, much more difficult, and territory where

there are dreadful echoes in all your photographs?

I think you have to approach it with a degree of optimism, oddly enough.

You know, for us, it's that fascination in a way of seeing spaces that would

have been very difficult to have gained access to,

or to even be made visible in a sense.

So, I think there's a kind of imperative there to visualise something,

-to picture something.

-But it's also certain, specific kind of sites

and certain kind of specific spaces which have

marked us and our upbringing and our childhood and our thinking.

Obviously, something which we're showing in the RA around Chernobyl.

That was '86. That impacted everybody.

It's going to look incredibly baroque.

And in fact, because of the chandeliers,

because of the red carpet...

but then also to have this image of what radioactive destruction

created in the architecture of these buildings, to have that pictured

in this space will be powerful in the context of the Royal Academy.

Also to see actually what civilisation was. What's happened.

-You know, not what's happened generally, just this idea.

-What CAN happen.

What man's hubris can actually, you know, create.

The wait for our hopefuls is over.

They've passed the judging stage, but now they will discover

if they've actually made it onto the hallowed walls of the RA.

COMPUTER CHIMES

Yeah, it's arrived.

"The members of the selection committee have given careful

"consideration to your entry but regret to inform you that

"it has not been included in the final selection."

Didn't get in. No.

Ah, that's so annoying, two not getting in.

I thought maybe I'd get one in.

It's all right. No problem.

Ah. "Dear Janette Byrne, the members of the selection committee have

"given careful consideration to your entries,

"but regret to inform you that it has not been included

"in the final selection."

Well, there we go.

After all that, I have to try next year again.

And again. Not champagne today, sorry.

Sorry, everybody can put the champagne away.

I'll have it on my birthday.

With two out of our three artists falling at the last hurdle...

..will duo Emma and Janet suffer a similar fate?

Or will their tribute to trees be hung on the walls of the Royal Academy?

-BOTH:

-Yes!

We're in! two pictures hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition!

So exciting!

It's varnishing day at the RA,

when exhibiting artists see their work for the first time.

But before Emma and Janet are allowed inside the gallery, there is

a small matter of the rituals of the Summer Exhibition itself.

Fittingly, for an institution as unique as the Academy,

varnishing day begins with a parade through Central London

and even takes in a church service.

In the sacred setting of St James's, Piccadilly,

aspiring artists rub shoulders with some rather famous figures.

..Jesus Christ, our Redeemer.

Amen.

Ancient formalities over, it's time for the festivities to begin.

Now, Emma and Janet can finally enter the Royal Academy itself.

It's a day of celebration for all those lucky enough to be here,

and the duo can find out exactly where their two

works are positioned.

-It's in an amazing position.

-Yeah, it's really good.

-I can't believe it.

-Great position.

It's about as good as it can be.

-Let's go and find where the other one is.

-Yeah, let's go.

-Wow.

-Fantastic.

That just changes that little picture into something

-completely different.

-It's amazing.

I feel a bit out of my depth, actually.

Just a touch overwhelmed.

As well as the success of Emma and Janet,

it's another triumphant year for Harry Hill.

And varnishing day is extra special this year as it hosts a very

unusual artistic duo.

Eva and Adele claim to have come from the future,

though you might remember this unique Austro-German pair

as the Eggheads on the programme Eurotrash.

We love it so much to be here

because it's incredible energy...

..and it's so surprising as well.

We also love this main hall, where our painting is here behind us.

So it's, for us, a very lucky experience to come to the

Summer Exhibition of Royal Academy.

The night before the launch of the Summer Exhibition,

the RA holds a grand dinner for its members and invited guests.

APPLAUSE

Tonight's Speaker is Marina Abramovic,

the performance artist who fearlessly pushes her own body

to create provocative images.

Ladies and gentleman, I'm sorry I cannot give you a speech

full of English wit, with eloquent references to Boris and Brexit.

-LAUGHTER

-But perhaps you will allow me

to tell you where I find inspiration,

both for my art and for my life.

When an idea appears in front of me,

I always ask myself, "Am I afraid of it?

"Or do I like it?" If I like it, I'm not interested.

I'm not after comfortable ideas.

I'm only interested in ideas that deeply disturb me.

Ideas that are difficult to realise.

Then the idea becomes some kind of obsession,

and the more I think about it,

the more I want to find a way to make it and share with others.

And so, it is the great pleasure for me

to invite my fellow guests to rise and join me

in a toast to the Royal Academy Of Art - past, present and future.

CHEERING

But the main event is

the announcement of the winner of the Charles Wollaston Award.

The prize of £25,000 is given for the most distinguished

work in the exhibition.

And I'm delighted to announce that the winner is...

..David Nash.

APPLAUSE

Nash's winning piece is Big Black,

created from a 1,000-year-old Californian redwood tree.

It was Big Red, because I wanted to make the most of the red colour.

But it didn't really work, so I charred it.

And that's very connected with the redwood,

because they need fire for their seeds to open.

And why does David think he won?

Because it's big and it's black.

And it's not a pretty thing.

That certainly would be some of the criteria, I imagine, of the judges.

It never occurred to me that it would be getting this prize.

It's an accolade for the work and for Big Black.

At last, it's the day of the opening party of the Summer Exhibition.

In the morning, Gilbert & George, the most famous duo in art,

are doing a photo call.

And now I have exclusive access to the show.

Ron Arad's sculpture is here.

It's monumental. It's all moving, it's all working.

It's a piece of architectural beauty, a piece of design genius.

This delivers Richard Wilson's first wow.

So, on the staircase, the second kind of wow that Richard wanted

was the Wilson twins and their extraordinary images of Chernobyl.

And I think he really has succeeded in this,

because they're disturbing and they're strangely beautiful,

and you can see the foliage coming in, where they've been abandoned.

And actually, it's incredibly thought provoking,

and they are utterly beautiful prints.

Now I'm off to meet the show's coordinator for a guided tour.

SHE LAUGHS

Well, you got a wow. I mean, the Noble and Webster up there.

-God, it's fantastic, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I think that's the message for our Royal Academy future, "Forever".

There are 22 duos in the exhibition spread throughout

all of these 14 galleries.

And then straight into another huge blast of colour in this room.

Gallery Six, yes. Chapman brothers, one of our duos.

These of course are dress dummies.

They've made their own audience for the piece of work.

-And you'll notice that, in their hands...

-Are their eyeballs.

..are their eyeballs, gouged from the figures,

but the eyes aimed at staring at the work.

It's so disturbing.

And then this wonderful piece of bronze.

I mean, it's just... It just seems so powerful.

It's almost like a meteorite has landed in the room.

Something that's been jettisoned, perhaps out of a volcano,

and thrown into the sky and landed in Gallery Six.

And it's...it's a fist. It's the RA saying, "We're here."

So this is almost like the last minute of calm

before the crowds are going to rush in and see what you have

-put together for them, what delights you've collected for them.

-Yes.

Do you think you've succeeded? How do you feel about all this now?

We will be meeting our critics for the first time this evening.

I'm feeling pretty good about it. I know we've done a good job.

And if I know I've done a good job,

I know that there will be a good response to it.

-And the big word you wanted was "wow".

-Yeah.

I mean, so what I'm trying to do is...

little flavours and little moments

and surprises and wows in every room.

So, the idea is to try and get as much punch going - fist, you know.

You come out and you say, "There was that, there was that, there was that."

And you come out and say, "Wow!"

You come out and say, "Wow, well done, Richard Wilson."

-Well done, Richard Wilson!

-LAUGHTER

It's party time, and an array of famous faces

enter the Royal Academy.

MUSIC: The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala

I kind of just run around with something to steal all of the art.

I didn't bring a big enough bag!

It's classy. It's gorgeous.

Beautiful people in lovely dresses.

I love that it's so eclectic and that it comes from, you know,

incredibly well-known artists through to, you know, local artists

who are making these pieces at home. So it's a lovely collection.

It gets me so excited about art every year. I love it.

This is our first, and I think it's brilliant because it's

so lovely, anyone can enter. And we're so excited.

The great thing about the Summer Exhibition is that

just about everything's for sale.

So, if you've got the money, there's artwork here at £200 or £20,000.

And all the money from sales goes to the Royal Academy Schools,

a free art college that's in this building.

So, who's buying what? We tagged along with two celebrity regulars.

First up, I met with Radio 1's Nick Grimshaw.

So, Nick, are you somebody who comes to the summer show every year?

-Yeah, I've been probably...maybe five or six times now.

-Whoa.

And I really, really love it. I love it because it's got absolutely

everything from sculptures to architectural drawings to sketches

to great photography,

and then you've got great new, exciting artists

-with the old greats, side by side.

-Yeah.

Meanwhile, I joined actress Jamie Winstone.

-By the way, you have to pass Iggy Pop to go through.

-Oh, do we?

Oh, I love him.

This event always gets me very excited.

You have new artists, you have mixed artists, you have photography.

And if you're not in the art world, and if you don't have loads of money, this is a great

opportunity to come and see that and venture out in your art skills.

-So... In fact, I can see something already.

-Let's go.

-Damn!

Jamie is on a shopping spree for her dad, actor Ray Winstone.

-I actually love these, but together. And that might be a little bit...

-Together?

You would buy both? Have you got carte blanche, then, from your father?

-Yeah.

-Have you, really?

-What, have it all? Yeah, a little bit.

OK, so he hasn't given you

a budget, and that's very dangerous.

He has given me a budget, but he has given me an idea of what he wants.

There's something in here that we should go and have a little look at.

I do buy art, and I do like to buy art, because I think it makes me

-really, really happy more than anything else that I buy.

-Yeah.

I don't know, I've not come out to specifically get anything.

But if I see anything... You never know with art.

It's like music, you never know when it's going to grab you and take you.

Oh, my God, I thought that was one of the waiters! LAUGHTER

-I was going to, like...

-Hello?

I tried to get a drink from her earlier.

I just thought she was being rude.

Though, that hors d'oeuvre is not as appetising as the salmon.

-I love this.

-Yeah.

There's something about having captured a moment

in a rave or in a party.

-So, this one's caught your eye.

-Yeah, this one up here.

Number, unfortunately, 666. Up there.

I rarely do like colour in pictures that I have in my house.

I like them if I'm in a gallery, but in my own home

I don't have a lot of stuff with vivid colours in it.

But I really like that.

Look at this guy up here. These guys.

-Wow.

-They're quite fun.

Have you ever bought from the Summer Exhibition before?

Yeah, I bought a few pieces.

One of my favourite pieces was by an artist who showed

here for the first time called Pauline Edmond.

She is amazing, and kind of like sketches and doodles.

And it's so random that, when it got sent to my house, my friend thought

it was, like, crazy fan mail.

She was like, "Something really weird's turned up at the house.

"Should I bin it?" I said, "No, I bought that, I love it."

So that was someone who's above my bed. That's my pride of place.

That is amazing.

That is probably something more my dad would go for.

OK, Jamie, it's £35,000.

Oh, perfect! Let me just get my chequebook out.

Every time a work is sold, a coloured dot is stuck to the wall.

So, will our VIP buyers paint the town red,

or will they keep their credit cards locked away?

-This I really like.

-Which one, this one?

-And I love this one.

-I really love this.

-What is it about this one that you like?

I always love skulls. I'm always drawn to skulls.

I always doodle skulls, and I love black-and-white landscapes.

I don't know. I think there's no reason to it.

I always find it quite funny talking about it.

It's just when you like it, I don't know.

So is it just if something grabs you and you think,

"Yeah, I'd like to have that in my space," and that's what you go for?

Yeah, totally. Because you've got to be around it,

and I think it's got to make you happy every day.

So, if you like it and you love the look of it...

I guess it's like being attracted to a person.

You see them and you're like, "I love them!"

-I think this is really beautiful.

-This, actually, how much is this one?

-I want this one.

-703 is... Alcove And Garlic Cloves. It's £380.

I absolutely love that.

-I think you need to buy that.

-I really want that.

There we are. You can buy it there.

-Sale.

-Sale.

MUSIC: Poison Arrow by ABC

# Shoot that poison arrow to my heart... #

Special guests at this year's party are the band ABC.

# Shoot that poison arrow to my heart... #

Fronted by Martin Fry,

they were one of the most beloved groups of the 1980s,

and in 2016 they've returned

with their first Top 10 album in three decades.

# Shoot that poison arrow. #

First of all, Martin, what was your reaction when you were asked

to play here?

A sense of honour. Yeah, it's a great privilege to come down here

to the Royal Academy and play for you guys, yeah.

But you have got an art connection anyway,

and I understand that is with Andy Warhol.

Who better to have an art connection with?

Yeah, originally, with ABC, we had a hit, Poison Arrow.

We went to New York, and Andy Warhol came to the show.

So, you know, it was a wonderful experience

to be signing on in Sheffield two weeks before

and then hanging with Andy.

And The Factory... He'd obviously made Empire State

and films that lasted for two days,

but he was fascinated by the whole medium of MTV,

the bands like Duran Duran and ABC.

I just wish I had a credit card at the time to buy something.

But he was really gracious and very encouraging to us, really.

We were a very young band.

-Well, you didn't have a credit card then, but you've got a credit card now.

-To buy something, yeah.

-In there?

-Well, there's a lot of rock-and-roll in there.

I'm always looking for the connection between music and art.

-There's an Iggy Pop bronze in there, Steven Bains.

-Yeah.

That looks wonderful. My wife says I can't buy it. She says, "You can't put that in the garden."

It's a beautiful statue of Iggy, yeah.

He should be on every street corner, really, shouldn't he?

He's a great icon.

Well, it's all dark, everybody's out here, everybody's excited.

What's that going to mean to you?

Well, it's a very chic crowd.

And that kind of suits ABC all these years on. We're survivors, yeah.

So, it feels good. We're going to play a hell of a show for you guys.

I think this has been the most glamorous year of the three

-we've been doing this together.

-Yeah.

But I think my highlight out of the whole exhibition

has to be the commission in the courtyard by Ron Arad, Spyre.

-It's amazing.

-Yeah, and I still think the Wilson twins are wonderful.

And I know that everybody's in here with the razzle-dazzle, but,

actually, in moments of quiet on the stairs, I think people will then

look again and really be moved by that.

So, all in all, I think it's a pretty fantastic...

-People are enjoying themselves and spending.

-Yeah.

And now, ABC with Viva Love.

CHEERING

# You think the world will melt if you whistle

# There's a certain spring in your stride

# You face the future like a heat-seeking missile

# You've got yourself a smile a mile wide

# Yes, you have

# Viva love

# Viva love, viva love, viva love

# Viva love

# Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# Viva! Viva!

# Viva love

Yeah.

# When lightning strikes, you don't look for shelter

# You're floating free, gravity defied

# It's hell for leather on a helter-skelter

# Just steel your nerves for a bright white knuckle ride

# Ride

# Yes, you should

# Viva love

# Viva love, viva love, viva love

# Viva love

# Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# Viva! Viva!

# Viva love

# Viva love, viva love, viva love

# Viva love

# Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# Viva! Viva!

# Viva love

# Come on

Yeah!

# In the battle of the sexes

# Victory's denied

# I'm charging your tanks

# With slingshots and knives

# My troops they retreat

# They run for their lives

# I'm facing defeat

# But somehow love survives

# Viva love

# Viva love, viva love, viva love

# Viva love

# Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# Viva! Viva!

# Viva love

# Viva love, viva love, viva love

# Viva love

# Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# Viva! Viva!

# Viva love. #

Thank you very much.