Summer Exhibition 2005

7 June — 15 August 2005

In the Main Galleries, Burlington House

The theme of the 237th Summer Exhibition was printmaking and the multiple. Artists have always wanted to make poetry through mechanics. Many of the greatest artists – from Rembrandt, Blake and Goya to Munch, Picasso, Rauschenberg and Hockney – have made printmaking central to their artistic output. Prints are a uniquely sensitive and graphic way of expressing ideas, and many artists today are alive to a world that is buzzing with printed and virtual imagery and the visual and communicative potential it offers.

This exhibition contained works by artists who translate their ideas through woodcut and etching, processes that go back centuries; by those who use innovative print techniques, such as photography and video; and by those who employ inkjet, giclée and other processes that are derived from new technologies. Whether artists are using pencils or computers, and whether they are producing works of art in an edition of one or 1,001, the 237th Summer Exhibition showed the enormous possibilities afforded by printmaking in all its manifestations. Alongside famous names are works by artists from as far afield as Australia and China, proving once again that the Summer Exhibition is a celebration of quality and diversity.

• Royal Academy of Arts