RA Magazine Blog Listing

The National Maritime Museum walls have been painted black and atmospheric music is being piped through hidden speakers. As an extra sensory layer, the hushed crackle of gallery attendants’ walkie-talkies sound eerily similar to those of an astronaut’s. But don't be fooled. There's nothing gimicky about the epicly titled Visions of the Universe.

This week: A survey of recent work by Thomas Scheibitz opens at Baltic, 'Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man' opens at The Queen's Gallery, Edinburgh, Cass Sculpture Foundation show works by Eduardo Paolozzi RA, and it's your last chance to catch two great shows: 'Cinematic Visions' at Victoria Miro and Merlin James at Parasol Unit

Not long ago, the visually aware among us could travel to the Edinburgh Festival knowing that – for one city break at least – art exhibitions could be forsaken for the pleasures of a pint and a stand-up or sketch show. But over the last decade a visual art festival has sprung up and slowly built momentum, to the point where any art-loving visitor to Edinburgh now has top-quality shows on offer as...

Recently elected a Royal Academician, Conrad Shawcross has established a career as a Renaissance man; an artist whose fascination with science has led to extraordinary works that fuse beauty with big ideas, often in the form of elaborate machines.

It is fair to say that Ellen Gallagher is a strong woman producing strong art. The Tate Modern's large rooms feel appropriately airy for this, Gallagher's first major retrospective in the UK.

Running away to sea may seem like an unlikely beginning for a future photographer, but this was exactly the step that the sixteen-year-old Edward Aubrey Russell Westwood took, joining Gravesend Sea School and then the Merchant Navy.

A large dark spherical vessel, blackened in firing and encrusted in parts on its surface, shines almost pale with reflected light in an illuminating exhibition of Moon Jars at the Korean Cultural Centre, London.

Just like tea, which happens to be a fundamental part of Jeremy Deller’s installation It’s a kind of English Magic for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, the British Council’s exhibition is intrinsically English. The show extracts the essence of the one in Venice, before it tours the UK in 2014.

This week: Anthea Hamilton opens at Bloomberg Space, Ikon display works by Japanese artist Shimabuku, Chisenhale Gallery shows Pratchaya Phinthong, 'The Future is Here' opens at the Design Museum and RA Schools student Anthony Faroux is displayed at Cardiff's Bay Art gallery

In the first of a video series inspired by the Royal Academy exhibition 'Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940', we take a look at the Mexican mural programme of the early 20th century, and the huge impact it had on the art of the period.

Artists’ films are works made by visual artists rather than traditional filmmakers, and more often than not they are seen in art galleries and museums rather than in cinemas. But the ICA in London has for the past five years run the Artists' Film Club, a programme that uses the institution’s quality cinema spaces to project significant developments in the medium.

This week: An exhibition of Sarah Morris is on display at White Cube Bermondsey, Aquatopia opens at Nottingham Contemporary, Arnolfini presents work by Ian Hamilton Finlay, works by Hamish Fulton are shown at Maureen Paley and a solo show of Emma Hart begins at Camden Arts Centre

The commissions for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square have had a habit of stimulating lively debate on the role of art and this year’s project promises to be no exception.

When painter Laura Knight became a Royal Academician in 1936 she was the first female to be elected with full membership status since 1768. A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery explores the unsentimentalised emotional presence and visual strength of her portraiture.

The Summer Exhibition of 1914 saw attacks by militant suffragettes on three works of art. Research Curator Helena Bonett delves into the Royal Academy’s archive to find out how the Academy, and the public, reacted.

This week: The Photographers' Gallery shows new work by BA and MA students, the Jack Bell Gallery displays sculptures by Gonçalo Mabunda, lithographs once displayed in Lyons teashops go on display at Towner, Eastbourne, Newlyn Art Gallery presents oil paintings by Andy Harper and an exhibition of work by Christopher Wood opens at Kettle's Yard

Since his first installations in the late 1960s, Californian artist Robert Irwin has taken the perceptual experience of the viewer as his subject, and the art object as something that, in his terminology, is 'conditional' – intrinsically connected to the changeable conditions of its environment.

While rarely disappointing as an exhibition, the BP Portrait Award occasionally causes frustration in its choice of winners. Not that the chosen aren't worthy of their positions, but yearly four or five others call for recognition of their artistic excellence. And therein lies the award's allure.

Royal Academician Richard Wilson is famous for his large scale, site specific sculptures - from 20:50, a room of reflective sump oil that plays tricks with space, to last year's 'Hang on a minute, lads…' which saw him balancing a bus on the roof of Bexhill on Sea's De La Warr Pavilion. His latest project takes him from defying gravity to freezing a moment - and a movement - in time.

Mexican revolutionary art at the RA, visions of utopia at the Whitechapel Gallery, Manchester International Festival and an open submission show at White Cube are among this week's art picks.

The poetic paintings of Per Kirkeby play out in a no man’s land between abstraction and figuration – a territory that the viewer finds hard to map.

Eduardo Paolozzi's collages in Chichester, a spotlight on contemporary Brazilian art, Eastern European sound art in Shoreditch and the return of Bold Tendencies to Peckham's multi-storey car park are among this week's art highlights.

From Proust to recent Man Booker winner Julian Barnes, memory is a juicy topic, ironically so given its insubstantiality. Now author Hari Kunzru questions what happens when we're denied this most intimate of our possessions. At the V&A, Kunzru's teamed up with 20 international artists and graphic novelists to turn his specially commissioned novella on the subject into a 3-D immersive graphic novel...

This week: 'Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life' opens at Tate Britain, National Gallery presents 'Vermeer and Music', a display of works by Gauguin is now open at the Courtauld, the Fine Art Society shows 'Sickert: From Life' and a new installation by Leandro Erlich opens in Dalston.

The RA Schools Show showcases the work of the 17 students who this year complete the three-year postgraduate fine art course in the RA Schools. In these videos we speak to two of the class of 2013, James Robertson and Marie von Heyl, about the work they will be showing in the exhibition.

In American artist Bill Viola's nine-channel installation Chapel of Frustrated Actions and Futile Gestures (2013), on view at Blain Southern’s show of his latest works, nine episodes unfold in simply sketched-out, quotidian environments. Viola moves from the general towards the particular, with everyday actions as his subject - such as the digging of a hole, or the pouring of water in a bowl.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was an artist ahead of her time, whose spiritual practice took her art into new territory as one of the earliest abstract painters. This year a touring exhibition and a presence at the Venice Biennale have cast fresh light on this enigmatic figure, as Gill Crabbe finds.

This week: 'Alternative Guide to the Universe' opens at the Hayward Gallery, Sculpture in the City begins on 20 June, Pallant House shows 'Modern British Collage', two shows on paper begin at Saatchi Gallery and the ICA and Roger Hiorns' site-specific installation opens at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

‘It's time for another generation to enjoy Chagall,’ explains curator Simonetta Fraquelli, at the new retrospective of the painter held at Tate Liverpool. Indeed, it is much hoped that Liverpool's electic, vibrant mix of young people will take Marc Chagall to their hearts.

About Chillida it’s been said that his works are not in space but that they are space,' wrote the late Carlos Fuentes. It is hard to disagree after an encounter with Chillida’s alabaster works on view at Ordovas, which presents the first London gallery exhibition of the Basque sculptor for almost two decades.

This week: Railings Gallery shows work by Donald Hamilton Fraser RA, an exhibition of Bill Jacklin RA opens at Marlborough Fine Art, Royal Academician sculptors Cornelia Parker and Anthony Caro have exhibitions opening at Frith Street and Gagosian Gallery, 'A Crisis of Brilliance' begins at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Pace Gallery shows work by actor and artist James Franco.

Gerhard Richter reworks one painting (Abstract Painting 724-4, 1990) into four individual Jaquard-woven tapestries in a new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery's Mayfair space

Looking at a catalogue for the Ashmolean’s new exhibition of their world-class collection of drawings, the pieces of paper appear like a level playing field: from Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo to Rubens, Watteau and Gainsborough, all the artists – in a sense – have the same limited tools.

This week: Gary Hume and Patrick Caulfield exhibitions open at Tate Britain and Waddington Custot, Sheila Hicks opens at Alison Jacques Gallery, the Design Museum show Lesser Known Architecture, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. go on show at Maureen Paley and it's your last chance to catch an exhibition of Geoff Uglow at Connaught Brown

Tom Hunter stages photographic scenes in response to both art-historical paintings and the conditions of his home borough of London, Hackney.

“Sound is the opposite of an art which privileges the eye.” Haroon Mirza’s new exhibition of sound-art installations at London’s Lisson Gallery challenges this preconception, with an examination of how audio’s intrinsic qualities ally with our perceptions of space.

This week: a new exhibition of kinetic sculptures by Michael Landy RA opens at the National Gallery, Jupiter Artland kicks off their summer season, Chisenhale Gallery shows work by Mariana Castillo Debball, new work by Sinta Tantra is installed in Holland Park and it's the last chance to see 'Becoming Picasso' at the Courtauld Gallery

As this year's Summer Exhibition takes shape in the RA's Main Galleries, Research Curator Annette Wickham takes a look back at preparations for the Summer Exhibition in 1792

This week: 'Dieter Roth: Diaries' opens at Camden Arts Centre, Roche Court display a two-person show of Rothschild and Clare Woods, Karsten Schubert display drawing by William Scott, 'Chris Levine: Light' is on show at the Fine Art Society and an exhibition of the Bay Area School opens at Thomas Williams Fine Art

This weekend Brighton Museum and Art Gallery opened a stellar survey of Koons’s works from the collection of gallerist Anthony d'Offay, acquired for the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland as part of the Artist Rooms programme. D'Offay collected pieces from across Koons’ oeuvre, making the exhibition a fine overview of the artist’s practice.

Leon Kossoff has been drawings and painting scenes of London in the same frenetic, expressionistic style for more than six decades. But looking at his latest works in the catalogue for his new show at Annely Juda Fine Art, there is no sense that his recent pieces are in any way anachronistic.

This week: an exhibition on Tudor and Stuart fashion opens at The Queen's Gallery, Richard Green displays work by the late Mary Fedden RA, Browse and Darby show works by Anthony Eyton RA, Jutta Koether goes on display at Bristol's Arnolfini and a comparison of photographs by Martin Parr and Tom Wood is shown at the Walker Art Gallery.

Charles Saatchi’s new exhibition at his Chelsea gallery follows the advertising mogul’s previous attempts to define the nation’s art scene, in shows such as ‘Newspeak: British Art Now’ (2010 and 2011) and, of course, ‘Sensation’, which was held at the Royal Academy in 1997.

New York-based painter Julie Mehretu has emerged over the last decade as a significant figure in the US contemporary art scene, and her large-scale abstract works were the subject of an exhibition in 2010 at the city’s Guggenheim Museum. So it is something of a surprise to learn that White Cube Bermondsey’s current show is her first major presentation in the British capital.

This week: Mariele Neudecker takes over a Brighton townhouse as part of the Brighton Festival, Trade Routes opens at Hauser & Wirth, Richmond Hill Gallery shows works by Frederick Gore RA, Fred Cuming RA is on display at Adam Gallery, an exhibition of works by Robert Morris opens at Sprüth Magers and The Otolith Group talk at The Japan Foundation next week.

Although best known for his paintings of gritty urban life in early twentieth-century New York, George Bellows painted a range of subjects throughout his career, which was cut short by his death at the age of 42. In these videos, the co-curators of the RA exhibition introduce four very different works by the artist, from the violence of the boxing ring to a family portrait.

If painter Paul Klee 'took a line for a walk’, then sculptor Alexander Calder took a line for a dance. His signature mobile sculptures – the highlights of an exhibition of the American artist at Pace London – move musically in all directions, their multiple metal lines curving with the energy and grace of a ballerina, their biomorphic shapes suggesting the expressive flourishes of a jazz dancer...

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was today announced as a nominee for the Turner Prize 2013, a decade after she completed a post-graduate course at the Royal Academy Schools.

This week: Towner Gallery display works by Fiona Rae RA, Gavin Turk is a Ben Brown Fine Arts, an exhibition of Paul Pfeiffer opens at Thomas Dane Gallery, Oreet Ahery's 'Party for Freedom' begins, Jerwood Gallery shows work by William Scott and Anthony Whishaw RA opens his studio to visitors this weekend

This week: Lucy and Jorge Orta reveal their new artwork at St Pancras Station, the works nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize go on show at The Photographers' Gallery, an exhibition of work by Richard Patterson opens at Timothy Taylor Gallery and new art space The Dairy opens

Sydney Lee was a highly accomplished and experimental printmaker, as curator Robert Meyrick demonstrates in these videos. His search for subjects took him from the waterways of Kent to the mountains of Switzerland, while his influences ranged from Whistler's etchings of the Thames to Japanese colour woodblock prints.

The Brazilian-born photographer Sebastião Salgado has gained both popular and critical acclaim in the Western world for his hauntingly beautiful black-and-white prints that document people living and working on the edge in less developed nations. His new photographic series, ‘Genesis’, premiered at London’s Natural History Museum last week.

Beginning his artistic career as a children's book illustrator, Russian artist Ilya Kabakov is no stranger to the powerful yet poignant force of illusion. In their artistic partnership, he and his wife Emilia Kabakov move fluidly between visual art, history and philosophy as they create what they call ‘total installations’, atmospheric environments designed to immerse the visitor.

Rather than the reverent silence one anticipates on a visit to an art gallery, last Saturday as I walked into White Cube Bermondsey a sound system was banging out UK bass music. In a large gallery in front of the public, artist Eddie Peake was rehearsing a performance piece, in which – to live music played by two musicians – a small group of dancer-actors made shapes to high-tempo beats, writhed...

This week: The 'strange visual soup' of Gert & Uwe Tobias at Whitechapel Gallery; recent paintings by Basil Beattie RA on show in Bath; John Riddy's photographs of Palermo; Whistler on the Thames and the long-awaited reopening of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

One of the treasures of the Royal Academy Collections is now on display in a new exhibition at the Chateau of Fontainebleau near Paris.

A truly cinematic art experience is on offer tonight at both multiplexes and art-house establishments across the country. As part of ‘Exhibition’, a series of films on great gallery shows, a feature-length documentary takes viewers behind-the-scenes of the Royal Academy’s ‘Manet: Portraying Life’.

Our fascination with the Roman ruins of Pompeii is fuelled by both our interest in remnants of an antique era and our awe at how such a vibrant city – in just a matter of hours – could be entombed by a natural disaster and lost for centuries. The British Museum’s new blockbuster exhibition does a balancing act by focusing squarely on the eruption of Vesuvius in its first and last sections, while...

Los Angeles-based Sterling Ruby salvages materials for his multidisciplinary and mixed-media works not from rubbish dumps but from his own studio. In the artist’s new series ‘Basin Theology’, on display as part of his solo show this month at Hauser & Wirth’s Savile Row space, shallow and scorched circular vessels are fused with the broken fragments of previous aborted pottery pieces.

This week: Royal Academicians are on view across the UK, Art First shows former RA Schools student Liane Lang, works by Celia Paul are on display at Marlborough Fine Art, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi are at Chisenhale Gallery and an exhibition of new works by Rachel Whiteread opens at Gagosian.

Andy Warhol experimented with celluloid in the mid-1960s, at the same time the New York pop pioneer was perfecting his silkscreen paintings. Three of the resulting 16mm films are on view in recently restored prints at the ICA this weekend.

This week: Phyllida Barlow opens at the Contemporary Arts Society, the ICA opens two shows focusing on art groups, an exhibition of works focusing on natural forms opens at Harewood House, Hatfield House showcases the sculpture of six RAs and Moore Rodin opens at Perry Green.

This week: The Foundling Museum displays the hidden stories of the Foundling Hospital, Richard Deacon curates an exhibition of Garth Evans at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, an exhibition on Kenneth Anger goes on display at Sprüth Magers London and works by Geoffrey Farmer go on show at the Barbican.

Where does one travel when one listens to music? And can any sonic journey – an expedition into what Schopenhauer called “the inexpressible depth of music” – ever find representation in one’s physical disorientation within space?

Since the earliest stages of his career in the 1940s, the paintings of the late Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies Hon RA have comprised of much more than just oil on canvas. Timothy Taylor Gallery’s presentation of ten works from Tàpies’ last two decades reminds us of the artistic gold this Barcelona-born alchemist was able to refine from the most unrefined materials.

The National Gallery’s exhibition of sixteenth-century Italian painter Federico Barocci is the first major monographic show on the artist. It affords an opportunity for many to discover an artist who, in his own time, enjoyed great popularity but has since had his star eclipsed by others.

The curved walls that spiral inside the Norman Foster RA-designed City Hall on the bank of the Thames form a suitable stage for a photography exhibition that examines the avant-garde architectural environment of Russia.

This week: Pae White creates a new installation at the South London Gallery, Jenna Burlingham Fine Art display work by Peter Greenham RA, photographs by Julian Anderson go on show at blackShed Gallery, Matt Calderwood: Paper Over the Cracks opens at Baltic, Alan Cristea show work by Jan Dibbets and Flowers open two shows of works by Tai-Shan Schierenberg and Tom Hammick.

This weekend at Sotheby’s in London, a presentation puts the ceramics of Pablo Picasso under the spotlight, with over 100 plates, bowls, pitchers, tiles and vases produced by the titan of modern art late in life.

In this video, Rebecca Lodge of Burgh House takes us on a stroll across Hampstead Heath and explains how this pocket of countryside just a stone's through from the city was so important in Constable's life and work. All of the oil sketches featured in the video are from the Royal Academy's Collections.

French artist Edouard Manet and American artist George Bellows were both painters of modern life; one capturing the world of nineteenth century Paris, the other forging a career in early twentieth century New York. But the similarities between these two virtuoso painters extend even further than this, as 'George Bellows' co-curator Ann Dumas explains in this video.

The 2013 Premiums Interim Projects exhibition is currently on at the RA's Burlington Gardens site, and provides a great opportunity to see the work of RA Schools students at the midway point in their three-year postgraduate course.

This week: Works by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye are on show at Corvi-Mori, an exhibition of Royal Academicians opens at Richmond Hill, Chatsworth House display paintings, drawings and sculpture by Wiliam Turnbull RA, 'RCA Secret' opens and Anne Purkiss' photographs of Royal Academicians go on display at Leighton House Museum.

Kutlug Ataman's latest work in London, an 80-minute double-screen projection at Thomas Dane Gallery, leaves the Turkish metropolis for a remote village in Anatolia. But an even more marked departure is his movement from documentary to fiction.

Taryn Simon's exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair sees her turn towards an existing index: the image archive of the New York Public Library, which contains over 1.2 million printed images.

This week: Works by Albert Oehlen go on show at the Zabludowicz Collection, new art fair Art13 opens at London's Olympia, a selection of works by Craigie Aitchison are at Waddington Custot Galleries, works from Central Asia and the Causcasus are exhibited at Sotheby's and exhibitions of R.B. Kitaj and Yinka Shonibare open.

The catalogues of the Royal Academy’s ‘Winter Exhibitions’ from their inception in 1870 to 1939 have been digitised and made available to search and browse online via the RA Collections website. The RA's Adam Waterton introduces some of his favourite finds.

'Cycles of Radical Will', Shaun Gladwell's new solo show at Bexhill on Sea, gives visitors a chance to immerse themselves in the Australian artist's video and installation art - quite literally, if they're prepared to jump on a BMX bike or a skateboard and take to the roof of the De La Warr Pavilion.

Ahead of the Academy’s ‘Australia’ exhibition this autumn, which will be the first survey of Australian art in over half a century in the UK, there is a chance this weekend to view in London highlights from the most significant private collection of the country’s modern and contemporary indigenous and non-indigenous art.

This week: Alan Cristea shows work by Julian Opie, 'Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901' opens at the Courtauld Gallery, an exhibition of works by Raqib Shaw goes on show at Manchester Art Gallery, Mark Leckey curates a new exhibition at The Bluecoat, Liverpool and a retrospective of sculptor Elisabeth Frink RA opens at The Lightbox, Woking.

In 2013 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, while recognised as a major figure of Spanish Golden Age art, has been eclipsed in the minds of connoisseurs. Now, two new exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Wallace Collection give a rare chance for us to reconsider his worth.

A trio of exceptional paintings – by David Hockney RA (b.1937), Francis Bacon (1909-92) and Peter Doig (b.1959) – is now on view at Christie’s, providing the opportunity to see some of the best of British painters of the 20th century and giving a masterclass in modern painting.

This week: 'Ice Age Art' opens at the British Museum, portraits by Man Ray go on display at the NPG, Luxembourg & Lacan displays work by Michelangelo Pistoletto, 'Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos' is at the Serpentine and work by Susan Hiller is on show at Matt's Gallery

The first exhibition dedicated to the connections between the work of Francis Bacon and Auguste Rodin opens tomorrow at Ordovas on Savile Row. The show, which features three works from each artist, pivots on some research that suggests a series of reclining figures by Bacon were inspired by two of the sculptor’s sculptures: 'Figure volante' and 'Iris, messagère des dieux' (both 1890–91).

Could this be the ultimate date exhibition? When I visited ‘Light Show’ at the Hayward on Friday night, there were an inordinate amount of couples ‘ooh’-ing and ‘aah’-ing in front of the awe-inducing light installations scattered around the gallery spaces.

This spring, the grounds of historic Hatfield House in Hertfordshire will host an exhibition of sculpture by six Royal Academicians.

Picasso’s paintings of his mistress Marie-Therese are among the most tender images of love in twentieth-century art, while Schiele’s drawings of his mistress Wally are among the most tormented. Magnificent examples of both are on public view at Sotheby’s Bond Street this week.

This week: Richard Prince opens at Sadie Coles HQ, Haunch of Venison display works by Thomas Joshua Cooper, Kraftwerk perform in the Tate's Turbine Hall and 'Knock Knock: Seven Artists in Hastings' goes on show at the Jerwood Gallery.

Long before Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth settled in St Ives in 1939, encouraging many other liked-minded modernists to the Cornish coast, the town, together with Newlyn, had been a magnet for nineteenth-century British artists, especially painters influenced by the Barbizon and Impressionists schools across the English School.

Owen Hopkins talks with the artist Blue Firth about her Architecture Space exhibition this spring

Irish artist-filmmaker Gerard Byrne, the subject of a new survey show at the Whitechapel, specialises in historical reenactment, focusing not so much on key events of popular history but lesser-known culture moments.

This week: Whitworth shows landscapes by John Piper, Juergen Teller is at the ICA, Schwitters in Britain opens at Tate Britain, 'Tessa Traeger: Chemistry of Light' is at Purdy Hicks, Sadie Coles HQ shows an installation of works by Angus Fairhurst, it's the last chance to see Helen Marten at Chisenhale Gallery, works by Richard Wentworth are on show at Lisson Gallery and Hauser and Wirth explore...

Bologna-born Giorgio Morandi was arguably the finest painter of still lifes in the twentieth century. He represented arrangements of bottles on a table in simplistic perspective and muted palette, but somehow – without trickery – he always achieved a kind of alchemy, by which such everyday items became endowed with a spiritual aura once on the canvas. Encountering a Morandi painting can be a mesmeric...

This week: Timothy Taylor Gallery presents new works by Fiona Rae RA, collaborative works by Nick Hornby & Sinta Tantra are on display at One Canada Square, the Contemporary Art Society opens a new space in East London, Eastside Projects in Birmingham feature sculpture by Mike Nelson and the Abbot Hall Art Gallery showcase contemporary artist, Uwe Wittwer.

Celebrating its 25th year, the London Art Fair (LAF) opened to the public yesterday in its usual location, the Business Design Centre in Upper Street.

To walk around 'Model' with Antony Gormley was by turns inspiring and daunting, even a bit frightening given how dark the space is inside his monumental sculpture and how uncanny and unexpected it is to be part of this vast, dark space – one he says has 'the darkness of the imagination rather than of nightmares'.

Royal Academician Ivor Abrahams began using gardens as a motif in his work in the 1970s. In recent years he has returned to the subject with a renewed enthusiasm, following an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute in 2008 that focused on his early prints and sculptures of gardens.

Print and printmaking has been as integral to the career of American artist Ed Ruscha as painting; the Los Angeleno and Honorary Royal Academician developed his obsession with the appearance of words while working as a typesetter at an advertising agency in the 1960s, and he has long produced books, book art, screenprints and lithographs alongside canvases.

This week: Jessica Warboys's film 'Pageant Roll' is screened at the Whitechapel Gallery, Kings Place Gallery presents a survey show of John Lessore, and it's your last chance to see a number of shows this Sunday, including Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain, Peter Lely at the Courtauld and The Lost Prince at the National Portrait Gallery.

From the Royal Academy's own 'Manet: Portraying Life' to the long-awaited reopening of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, here's the RA Magazine team's pick of 10 art world events and exhibitions to get excited about in the opening months of 2013.

2012 has been a special year for London and a special year for the Royal Academy too. In this video, we take a look back at some of the highlights, from 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' to 'Bronze'.

Royal Academician Humphrey Ocean's exhibition 'A handbook of modern life' at the National Portrait Gallery comprises a series of paintings of family, friends and other visitors to his studio. In this video, he describes what the process of portrait painting is like, from the moment a visitor first enters his studio.

The best of RA publications, new books on Royal Academicians and the RA Magazine team's personal wishlist

This week: From Death to Death opens at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, SLG reveals the work of Sanja Iveković, it's your last chance to see Richard Hughes at Tramway, Ruskin's Landscape is on display in Force of Nature at Museums Sheffield and the doors close on Winifred Nicholson at Kettle's Yard.

Since its foundation in 1993, Michael Hoppen Gallery in Chelsea has collected, presented, promoted, sold and published photography in all its myriad forms, becoming one of London’s most influential advocates for the medium.

Marlborough Fine Art on Albemarle Street, off Piccadilly, celebrates the 80th birthday of Quentin Blake this month with an exhibition of works on paper from this year. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t adore Blake’s idiosyncratic illustrations, their affection first blossoming while reading a Roald Dahl book as a child or to a child. But the Marlborough show presents another side of Blake’s output...

This week sees some art sales take centre stage at Christie’s for those looking to invest in a special fine art gift for themselves or their loves ones.

The most successful Swiss import into America in recent years is not a type of chocolate or clock but an art fair, Art Basel Miami Beach. A sister to Art Basel since 2002, the fair has fast become one of the most influential in the international art calendar and acts as a magnet for collectors, curators, artists and art professionals for a handful of days.

This week: Hong Kong artists display work at Saatchi Gallery, snap up Christmas gifts at the RCA fête and The New Craftsman's pop-up shop, Flowers Gallery shows a selection of small-scale work by artists from Tom Phillips RA to Bryan Kneale RA, RIchard Green Gallery celebrate Alfred Munnings PPRA and an exhibition exploring the relationship between Eduardo Paolozzi RA and Nigel Henderson opens at...

This week: 'Carving in Britain' opens at The Fine Art Society, Blain Southern shows works by Francesco Celemente, the Serpentine Gallery displays a survey of Jonas Mekas, William Burroughs is at the October Gallery and Valentino goes on show at Somerset House

Tony Cragg RA follows up his treasure hunt of large-scale sculptures around London’s Exhibition Road with an exhibition at the Lisson Gallery until mid-January. But the show’s gallery context does not mean a reduction in ambition; the exhibition is ‘almost boiling over with energy’, presenting highly dynamic works from this year that develop further the types of forms seen in South Kensington.

The Royal College of Art’s expansive survey of artworks from past staff and alumni touches upon so many of the key artists, architects and designers this country has produced over the last 175 years that, rather than a focused show on teaching methods and the experiences of students, it presents as a potted but pretty comprehensive history of modern British art.

This week: The Piper Gallery presents Abstract Paintings from the Seventies, Josephsohn goes on show at Hauser and Wirth, Florian Hecker is at Sadie Coles HQ and pop-up shop House of Voltaire opens in Mayfair

Ben Uri Gallery holds approximately 1300 works by artists mainly of Jewish descent – including Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine, Sonia Delaunay, Mark Gertler and Sandra Blow RA – making it London’s Jewish Museum of Art.

Beijing-based painter Zeng Fanzhi – the subject of a solo exhibition at London’s Gagosian Gallery – emerged to acclaim in the mid-1990s. His more recent works have probed the psychological potential of landscape.

If you have any plans to wander around and wonder at the autumn leaves in Richmond Park this month, then tie in a trip with a visit to Richmond Hill Gallery, which has a show of works on paper – paintings, monotypes, carborundums and screenprints – by Academician Barbara Rae.

This week: Alan Cristea show works by Gillian Ayres RA, 'Death: A Self-portrait' opens at the Wellcome Collection, catch 'The Art of Remembrance' on iplayer, the winners of the BJP International Photography Award go on show at Foto8 Gallery and a display of Ansel Adams is at the National Maritime Museum.

The preeminent French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was scathing about the possibilities of colour photography, claiming in Le Monde that the ‘only good colour photo I have taken’, which appeared on the cover of the celebrated Camera magazine in 1954, was ‘too self-consciously aesthetic’. A fascinating free exhibition at Somerset House takes Cartier-Bresson’s attitudes towards colour as a challenge...

When I recently sat for my portrait by Humphrey Ocean RA, the experience was both familiar and alien. After all, I have spent years looking at portraits, talking to artists, visiting their studios and writing about them. But I never knew what it was like to be the subject of a work of art, to sit still, keep quiet and be painted, until now.

I have looked at countless portraits but I never sat for one until recently, when Humphrey Ocean RA painted me for this page, as part of the redesign of RA Magazine's print edition.

Honorary Royal Academician Renzo Piano, architect of London's Shard, has created the latest addition to Oslo's evolving skyline: a new home for the Astrup Fearnley Museum. Kitty Corbet Milward pays it a visit

This week: 'Light from the Middle East' opens at the V&A, 'A Bigger Splash' begins at Tate Modern, White Cube display works by Josiah McElheny, films by William Kentridge are at Tate Tanks and Hauser & Wirth show recent works by Isa Genzken.

This Sunday the doors close on an engaging exhibition by Chicagoan artist and designer Theaster Gates, on view at White Cube’s impressive space on Bermondsey Street.

This week: 'Seduced by Art' opens at the National Gallery, The Queen's Gallery displays work from the Northern Renaissance, Jean Dubuffet goes on display at Pallant House, Artangel restage Stifter's Dinge and Paradise Row shows work by Anna Bjerger

The continued buoyancy of the global Asian art and antiquities market, and the British capital’s preeminent place within it, is reflected by Asian Art in London, a ten-day festival of sales and events on the subject that now celebrates its fifteenth year.

London's Piper Gallery is currently showing new paintings by Royal Academician Tess Jaray. In the video below, the artist discusses some of the inspirations for her work, from Malevich's Red Square to the architecture of Damascus.

Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts (Szépmüvészeti Múzeum) has loaned Pablo Picasso’s watercolour 'Mother and Child' (1905) and Artemisia Gentileschi’s oil 'Jael and Sisera' (1620) to Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery until February 2013. The gallery’s Curator of European Fine Art, Xanthe Brooke, tells Sam Phillips why the two works fascinate her.

This week: Cedric Morris and Christopher Wood at Norwich Castle Museum, last chance to see group show 'Edge of Arabia', Cathy Wilkes and Shio Kusaka go on show at The Modern Institute, Goshka Macuga at Kate MacGarry closes this weekend and Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings opens at Hepworth Wakefield

The Affordable Art Fair (AAF) opens in a temporary structure in Battersea Park tomorrow. The fair has been staged annually every autumn in the South London park since October 1999, but in the past thirteen years the AAF brand has also become a global phenomenon, spreading to cities across the world including Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Seattle, Hong Kong, Singapore, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg...

The Whitechapel Gallery has just opened the first major survey show in Britain of Mel Bochner, one of an influential group of New York-based artists who, from the 1960s, pioneered conceptual art.

I urge you to visit a magnificent show of large-scale sculptures by the Los Angeles-based British artist Thomas Houseago in the next week, before the exhibition – on view at Savile Row’s Hauser & Wirth – closes on 27 October.

This week: Ruth Borchard's collection goes on show at Kings Place Gallery, catch Toby Ziegler's Q Park installation before it closes, it's the last chance to see Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at Paradise Row, The Lost Prince opens at the NPG and an exhibition on Art and Vodou begins on Saturday at Nottingham Contemporary.

In the decade since Frieze Art Fair launched in London’s Regent’s Park, it’s become an unmissable fixture of the global art calendar. In this video, Frieze Co-Director Amanda Sharp tells Sarah Greenberg how Frieze has grown since its beginnings as an art magazine, and we explore some of the highlights of this year’s fair. Keep an eye out for work by Royal Academicians including Anthony Caro, Grayson...

Regent's Park is home to not one but two art fairs this week. Frieze London, now in its 10th year, has been joined by Frieze Masters - a new fair that covers art from antiquity to the year 2000.

As well as solo and group exhibitions across the city’s public and private galleries, the week of Frieze Art Fair has also seen three smaller ‘satellite’ fairs open up in an effort to attract some of the many art lovers who are out in force in the capital.

New York’s Pace gallery has leased a London outpost in the Royal Academy of Arts' Burlington Gardens and has opened with a museum-quality inaugural show: a two-person exhibition that compares and contrasts American Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko with the contemporary Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Frieze Week is upon us – and the word ‘Week’ deserves its capital letter, if one considers how the annual Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park spurs the whole London art scene to launch simultaneous exhibitions and art events. Here’s the lowdown on RA Magazine’s top ten exhibitions opening their doors away from the Regent’s Park tent.

The summer of 2012 has been an exciting moment, almost an archaeological one, at the Royal Academy Schools. A large collection of plaster casts of architectural elements – assembled in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for teaching purposes, and now forming part of the Royal Academy’s significant cast collection – was revealed from behind panels in the First Year Studios.

Although featuring recognisable forms such as buildings and figures in landscapes, the rich and romantic paintings of the Scottish-born, Trinidad-based artist Peter Doig seem less a record of the world than an attempt to paint memories, or maybe dreams.

New shows opening ahead of Frieze week include Belgian painter Luc Tuymans; a show that pairs Lucian Freud and the Baroque Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci; Gillian Ayres RA at Jerwood Gallery, ceramics by Edmund de Waal at Alan Cristea and Barbican's experiential Rain Room.

Sam Phillips assesses the four nominees for this year's Turner Prize as their work goes on show at Tate Britain.

Sam Phillips hails this monumental exhibition of international contemporary art and picks out some highlights of the 100-day event.

This week: Abbot Hall celebrate 50 years with an exhibition of Hughie O'Donoghue, Maurizio Cattelan opens at the Whitechapel Gallery, Rashid Johnson goes on display at the South London Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery show work by Ed Atkins, Eric Bainbridge and Simon Martin go on show at the Camden Arts Centre, Elmgreen & Dragset are at Victoria Miro and The Wild the beautiful and the Damned closes at...

The Serpentine’s new survey show of the work of German artist Thomas Schütte is subtitled ‘Faces and Figures’, but the torsos and limbs of the human body are rarely present in the exhibition.

The RA's autumn exhibition Bronze has received a rapturous response from the critics. One of the show's aims is to celebrate bronze's range as a medium, both in age - from the Bronze age right up to the present day - and artistic possibility.

The UK’s most important contemporary art festival kicked off last weekend in Liverpool. Comprised of group exhibitions and specially commissioned site-specific projects across the city, this year’s Liverpool Biennial – now in its seventh edition and led by a new director, Sally Tallant, formerly of London’s Serpentine Gallery – has seen a variety of interesting venues open to the public in the name...

This week: 'Renaissance to Goya' opens at the British Museum, The David Roberts Art Foundation opens, the London Art Book Fair takes place at the Whitechapel Gallery, Rita Ackermann goes on show at Hauser and Wirth and 'Garden of Reason' closes at Ham House.

This week: Mali Morris RA opens at Eagle Gallery, Robert Motherwell's prints go on show at Bernard Jacobson, Aspen Magazine goes on show at the Whitechapel Gallery, the winner of the Jerwood Drawing Prize is announced, and Michael Kidner RA is on display at Flowers East.

Nowhere Less Now, by British artist Lindsay Seers, is the latest major commission by Artangel, the organisation acclaimed for producing groundbreaking contemporary art projects in unlikely places.

This week: 'The Art of Chess' opens at the Saatchi Gallery, Daido Moriyama's photographs are on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, Annely Juda shows painting by John Golding and Adam Dant presents his latest work at Hales Gallery.

Alison Wiliding RA's pieces are always alert to real world associations, through both their shapes and their materials. Her series 'Drone' is currently on view at London's Karsten Schubert gallery.

This week: Thea Djordjadze opens at Sprüth Magers, David Blandy features in the Brighton Digital Festival, Alexandre da Cunha goes on show at the THomas Dane Gallery, HaYoung Kim is at Hoxton Art Gallery and RAs show in 'Sculptor's Drawings'.

The Scottish-born, East London-based artist Jock McFadyen was recently elected a Royal Academician. McFadyen currently has a solo show at The Fleming Collection, and in the video below he explains how this major survey demonstrates how his approach to painting has changed during the course of his career.

The first man-made metal, it is strong and enduring, an alloy of base metals that becomes more than the sum of its parts, a product of human ingenuity and created by almost every civilization. Indeed, in his feature on the RA’s Bronze exhibition, the broadcaster Michael Wood writes, ‘Civilisation came with the working of bronze.’

This week: Cork Street Open goes on show and the last chance to see Zhang Huan at White Cube Bermondsey, 'Billie Cowie: The Revery Alone' at the Wapping Project, Annex East closes its first exhibition and the doors close on 'Gravity and Disgrace' at Blain Southern.

This week: Street art celebrating 150 years since the birth of Gustav Klimt, Richard Parry's Elephant Paintings at Bloomberg SPACE and last chance to see John Currin at Sadie Coles.

The art critic Robert Hughes, who died on August 6, was among the greatest art critics of his generation, bringing an intelligent, irreverent and irresistibly readable voice to writing on art. In the way that Picasso was able to break the rules of art because he knew them so well, Hughes’ knowledge of art ran so deep that he was able to joke about it and wear his learning lightly, to talk about...

Sarah Greenberg, Editor of RA Magazine, remembers a friend and champion of the arts, while Charles Saumarez Smith, Chief Executive of the RA, has written her obituary in the Telegraph

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we've taken a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, in our final video, architect Roz Barr discusses her model 'Vaal’ – New Church Valer which can be found in Gallery VI. The Summer Exhibition closes on 12 August.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we're taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, printmaker Martin Langford discusses his work Tunnel Vision which can be found in Gallery III.

Galleries and museums are wisely avoiding opening any major shows during the Olympic fortnight, for the fear they might sink without a trace in a nation gripped by sporting fever. RA Magazine's Sam Phillips offers his picks of the best shows around London coming to a close over the next two weeks, from Grayson Perry at Victoria Miro to British Design at the V&A.

This Summer Waddesdon Manor – the Rothschild stately home in rural Buckinghamshire – is showing ambitious contemporary art inside and out.

Although the Edinburgh Festival every summer is synonymous with theatre, comedy and other performance arts, the Scottish capital has increasingly become a visual arts destination each August, thanks to an array of ambitious gallery exhibitions and site-specific commissions under the auspices of the Edinburgh Art Festival.

Saturday saw the start of Tate Blackouts, a showcase for Olafur Eliasson's 'Little Sun' project in which visitors can explore the darkened surrealism galleries in Tate Modern after closing time using the lamp that Eliasson has developed with engineer Frederik Ottesen.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we're taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, first-time exhibitor David Webb discusses his work 'Laguna San Ignacio' which can be found in Gallery III.

This week: The Photographer's Gallery shows 'The World in London', it's the last chance to see Mary Ramsden at Pilar Corrias, Thomas Houseago goes on show at the Sainsbury Centre, 'Calder in India' closes its doors at Ordovas gallery and Jeremy Deller's Sacrilege tours the parks of London.

Keep an eye out for the time on Friday morning. At 8.12am, when you might normally be spreading butter on your toast, waiting for the bus or – in a perfect world – still in blissful sleep, one of the most ambitious performance art works the UK has ever seen will be underway, and you could take part.

'Gary Hume: Flashback' is a touring exhibition from the Arts Council Collection. It features works by the Royal Academician ranging from early in his career to the present day, and is currently on show at The Jerwood Gallery]* in Hastings.

I approached the British Museum’s new exhibition about Shakespeare, ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’ with a touch of trepidation if not downright doubt. How could an array of objects about Shakespeare add anything to his plays? I emerged from the show well and truly put in my place.

Dance and architecture seem like very different disciplines, so how can one respond to the other? The choreographer Katie Green rose to the challenge with her recent commission for the Royal Academy's Courtyard, a site-specific dance in and around Chris Wilkinson RA's architectural installation 'From Landscape to Portrait'.

The first stage of Tate Modern’s long-term expansion project opened to the public on Wednesday in the form of The Tanks: subterranean spaces, formerly vast oil containers for the Bankside power station, which have been reclaimed for the presentation of art.

This week: Damián Ortega opens at White Cube Mason's Yard, printmaker Alan Kitching goes on show at Advanced Graphic London, Leeds' Henry Moore Institute takes a new look at Sarah Lucas, the celebration of print studio Paupers Press moves up to Northumbria University and Edinburgh National Gallery explore the influence of Symbolism in 'Van Gogh to Kandinsky'.

Research Curator Helena Bonett of the Royal Academy's Library and Collections department shines a light on one of the hidden treasures of the Royal Academy's Collections.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we're taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, Royal Academician Tom Phillips discusses his work The Seven Ages of Man which can be found in Gallery V.

The works of Simon Patterson take a wry look at our conventional classification systems and hierarchies. In his new exhibition Patterson has collected photographs of around 30 equestrian statues examining their relationships and status as symbols of national identity. Posted 16 July 2012 by Sam Phillips

Following their presentation in a grand columned space at St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, Antony Gormley RA’s series of cast-iron figures ‘Still Standing’ (2010–11) comes to London for an exhibition at White Cube’s Hoxton Square gallery, on view now until the autumn.

The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire’s 3000 Old Master Drawings have been famous but out of sight for nearly 300 years within their vast art collection at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. Now, 12 drawings from their collection - including works by Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck - are on display.

This week: Contemporary artists' take on Titian go on show in 'Metamorphosis' at the National Gallery, Julian Opie opens at the Lisson Gallery, the Regent's Canal Festival features 70 contemporary artists across the waterway, the nominees for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize go on display at the Photographers' Gallery and Peter Blake goes on display at both Paul Stolper and the Fine Art Society...

The 1969 film 'The Italian Job' ends on the ultimate cliffhanger. A coach carrying a gang of gold bullion thieves and their ill-gotten gain teeters on a precipice in the Italian alps, the gang trying to figure out how to save both themselves and the gold, until Michael Caine utters the immortal words: 'Hang on a minute lads... I've got a great idea'.

The Royal Academy's new exhibition of 19th-century French masterpieces from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opened this weekend. In the videos below, curator Richard Rand introduces three key works from the exhibition

‘Bold Tendencies’ is the country’s most unconventional summer sculpture park, an annual exhibition over the top floors of a multi-storey car park in Peckham in South London, a short walk from Peckham Rye train station. Rather than rolling hills or picturesque forests, the works of the participating artists respond each year to a grimy example of Brutalist inner-city architecture. Posted 6 July 2012...

This week: Tate launches a new online gallery of lost art, contemporary sculture goes on show at Chelsea Physic Garden, The Bruce Lace Experience opens at Camden Arts Centre, Frank Bowling RA goes on show at Eleven Spitalfields, former RA Schools student Francesca Lowe's solo exhibition opens at Riflemaker, Romuald Hazoumè opens at the October Gallery and Edward Allington and Vaughan Grylls are...

This week, the architect Chris Wilkinson RA discusses his installation 'From Landscape to Portrait' in the Royal Academy's Annenberg Courtyard.

'Jeremy Deller: Bats in Space' sees the artist team up with bat scientist Professor Kate Jones with the aim of bringing the hidden world of bat communication to life.

Since 2004 Warwickshire’s Compton Verney – an eighteenth-century Georgian mansion set in stunning Capability Brown-designed grounds – has staged high-quality art exhibitions comprised of loans from national collections. Today it opens what looks to be a fascinating summer show on the subject of flight.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we'll be taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, Anne Desmet RA discusses her works Olympic Shadows, London Olympic Velodrome, Olympic Aquatics Centre in construction, and London Olympic Site - WWII Archaeology which can be found in Gallery I. Posted: 27 June 2012 by Amy Macpherson, RA Website Editor.

This week: Munch opens at Tate Modern, the Whitechapel Gallery presents 'The London Open', Masterpiece London opens and your last chance to see the RCA graduate shows.

'Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings' opened this week at Tate Liverpool. Art Historian and RA Magazine contributor Simon Wilson picks his favourite work by Turner in the show. Posted: 26 June 2012 by Simon Wilson.

Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery celebrates the relationship between pop music and Pop art this summer with four related shows. Two are monographic exhibitions, concentrating on Peter Blake RA and Derek Boshier and their close relationships with musical culture. Another display entitled ‘Artist Pop Stars’ showcases the artwork of musician-artists, such as Bryan Ferry and Ian Dury (once a student...

While many artists paint self-portraits at one time or other, Bacon painted them obsessively. This week only, lucky Londoners can see three Bacon studies for self-portraits within a five-minute walk from each other. Posted: 25 June 2012 by Sarah Greenberg, RA Magazine Editor

The Tokyo-born artist, musician, poet, performer and peace activist Yoko Ono is the subject of the Serpentine Gallery’s summer exhibition. Before she became a household name in the late 1960s for her relationship with John Lennon, Ono established herself as a pioneer of the type of multidisciplinary conceptual practice that was define avant-garde art over the following decades.

Can cities be playful? Well, the organisers of the London Festival of Architecture certainly think so as the title for this year’s fortnight of events, exhibitions and happenings is ‘The Playful City’. And with the Olympics looming large on the horizon – both metaphorically and in reality with Anish Kapoor’s Orbit now a landmark of east London – there is no better year to put forward such an idea...

American artist Bruce Nauman was mentioned briefly on this blog a few weeks’ back in connection with the screening of his early video and performance art at White Cube Bermondsey. Another strand of the pioneering media artist’s work is on display this week at the ICA in the form of Days (2009), a sound work in the venue’s ground floor gallery.

John Constable’s masterpiece ‘The Lock’ (1824) from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid is a top lot of Christie’s Old Master sale on 3 July. In this stunning painting, along with his other ‘six-footers’, Constable looked at the landscape from the ground up, creating a new point of view. But I was stopped in my tracks by Constable’s smaller, sublime sky study Storm Clouds over Hampstead...

This week: Mark Wallinger shows at Baltic, 'Francis Bacon to Paula Rego' opens at Abbot Hall, Carlson Gallery opens a new space in Mayfair, Timothy Taylor gallery show works by Diane Arbus and your last chance to see Calder at Crane Kalman. Plus, the latest openings of Royal Academician's shows.

After a tour of the sale rooms, Sarah Greenberg chooses her favourite works from this evening's Impressionist Modern auction at Christie's.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we'll be taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, Olu Shobowale discusses his work 'Chicken Chair' which can be found in the Large Weston Room.

The RA Schools Show, which opens today, showcases the work of the 16 students who this year complete the three-year postgraduate fine art course in the RA Schools. We spoke to three of this year's students as they were installing their work in the Schools' historic studios, transformed into a contemporary gallery space for the run of the exhibition:

If you're in the Bond St area today by lunch time, run - don't walk - to Sotheby's for a last chance to see the public view, where you can glimpse some fabulous works from their Impressionist Modern sales that may soon vanish into private collections.

Twenty years since Rachel Whiteread's masterpiece 'House', she has been commissioned to produce a permanent piece - a frieze installed on the façade of London’s Whitechapel Gallery. The work was unveiled last week and characteristically involves casting negative spaces and replicating elements of buildings and objects, using the Whitechapel’s existing turn-of-the-century ornamentation as her inspiration...

This week: George Osodi at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, Leah Gordon shows a series of new photographs at Riflemaker, recent paintings by Academician Barbara Rae is on display at Adam Gallery in Bath, Gillian Wearing RA at the Whitechapel Gallery closes on Sunday and Invisible Art goes on show at the Hayward Gallery.

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we'll be taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, Nuala O'Donovan discusses her work 'Banksia, Dynamic Layers' which can be found in Gallery VIII.

New York-based artist Jenny Holzer came to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s, developing a form of text-based art that emphasised the socio-political status of public communication, in contrast to some of the more impenetrable language-based work of her conceptualist peers. Until the end of July, Sprüth Magers in the West End of London presents a solo exhibition that provides an interesting...

Such is the ubiquity of Henry Moore’s sculpture in parks and other public spaces, and so central to the canon of twentieth-century British art has his work become, that I visited the show of his late, large-scale sculptures at London’s Gagosian Gallery with no expectations of surprise. But the exhibition is surprising...

Each week during the Summer Exhibition we'll be taking a closer look at a work, or group of works, in the show. This week, Cornelia Parker RA discusses her work 'Brontëan Abstractions (Deletions from the Original Manuscript of ‘Jane Eyre’)' which can be found in the Large Weston Room.

This week: Polly Morgan at All Visual Arts, Nancy Holt shows at Haunch of Venison, Haroon Mirza wins the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize, SNAP 2012 comes to the Aldeburgh music festival and Shirazeh Houshiary goes on show at Lisson Gallery.

The RA Annual Dinner feels like walking into a fairytale banquet: men wear white tie and medals, ladies wear evening gowns with glittering jewels, trumpeters play a fanfare into dinner and the British arts establishment sups surrounded by the paintings of the Summer Exhibition and the historic silver that has been donated by Royal Academicians since the RA was founded in 1768.

The V&A has just opened a mid-career retrospective of the work of Thomas Heatherwick, whose studio has emerged over the last two decades as one of the country’s most experimental design practices.

This summer’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has been conceived by the celebrated Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei Hon RA, the design team responsible for the iconic ‘Birds Nest’ Beijing National Stadium at the 2008 Olympic Games.

In this week's wrapup: Howard Hodgkin shows at Alan Cristea, James Hyman Fine Art celebrate Derrick Greaves's 85th birthday, Hauser and Wirth show an exhibition of Guillermo Kuitca, A memorial exhibition for Adrian Berg RA opens at Pallant House and ex-RA Schools student Veronica Smirnoff presents recent works at Gallery Vela

Yesterday was Non-Members Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy, the first chance for artists selected for the Summer Exhibition to see their work displayed in the galleries.

Tom Phillips RA is celebrating his 75th birthday with two exhibitions and a fifth reprint of his acclaimed artist's book A Humument, as Richard Cork reports in the Summer 2012 edition of RA Magazine. We visited Tom Phillips at Flowers Gallery on Kingsland Road, where his exhibition 'The Remains of the Day' recently opened. In the video below, he introduces the exhibition and discusses several of...

Among the big hits at last year’s Venice Biennale was the Polish pavilion, featuring Israeli Yael Bartana’s ambitious film trilogy about the fictional Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, calling for the return of 3.3m Jewish people to their forefathers’ homeland.

Tracey Emin RA’s returns home to Margate from Saturday with a major exhibition at Turner Contemporary.

Several standout shows, Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, Alighiero Boetti at the Tate Modern and Louise Bourgeois at the Freud Museum, close this week. Plus, ex-RA Schools student Rachael Champion has organised an afternoon of activities at the Camden Arts Centre and Damien Hirst and Bruce Nauman go on show at the White Cube.

The first exhibition to focus solely on Bridget Riley’s seminal black-and-white works from the early 1960s is presented across two West End galleries until mid-July: Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert in St James’s and Karsten Schubert in Soho’s Golden Square.

On Saturday 12 May, in unexpected sunshine, Lismore Castle Arts opened its annual summer international exhibition. Dotted around the beautiful formal gardens and displayed in the galleries, until 30 September, are large-scale sculptures by Swiss sculptor Hans Josephsohn.

The largest public gallery in London has just got larger. The Photographers’ Gallery opens its doors to the public again this Saturday in its Ramillies Street home – around the corner from Oxford Circus – after a major renovation project by acclaimed Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey that includes a two-storey extension.

As the Summer Exhibition gets underway, the RA truly starts to feel like an Academy. Artists and architects roam the galleries discussing, debating and hanging art – both their own and that of others – as they set about the herculean task of hanging well over 1,000 works (selected from over 10,000, in a process shown above) in a matter of weeks.

In this week's wrapup: Don't miss Mondrian║Nicholson: In Parallel at the Courtauld; art institutions across the country open their doors for the Museums at Night festival; Stratford Underground station is brightened up by Who is Community? and The Triumph of Pleasure opens at the Foundling Museum.

The representations in 'Galápagos', a new group exhibition at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, presents a more complex picture of the archipelago than the images we are most familiar with.

Estimated to fetch £1m-1.5m (over £100,000 per centimetre) this long lost imperial seal of the Qianlong Emperor looks set to be the star lot of Bonhams Asian art sale this week.

There's still time to catch an exhibition of recent work by newly elected Royal Academician Terry Setch at Flowers Gallery in Cork Street this week.

Royal Academician Richard Deacon challenges the idea that ‘the whole is more the sum of its parts’ in an exhibition of recent sculptures at the Lisson Gallery. The geometric constructions on view are all comprised of a series of smaller polygonal components that assert their integrity with each structure.

The Bowes Museum, a grand nineteenth-century chateau in the historic Durham market town of Barnard Castle, is the British venue for a touring exhibition of photography that contextualises the famously turbulent relationship of painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera with the social and political changes of their native Mexico.

RA Magazine featured British painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye last year in an article that caught up with graduates of the RA Schools. The London-born artist, who left the Schools in 2003, has a solo show on view until 13 May at Chisenhale Gallery, a space in the east of the city which has built an international reputation over 30 years for its enlightened contemporary art programme.

In this week's wrapup: Don't miss Jeremy Deller and David Shrigley at the Hayward; last chance to catch Blek le Rat's pioneering street art at Opera Gallery; Flights of Fancy in Cheshire's Tatton Park; two art fairs in London and an exhibition of automatic drawing.

A major exhibition of Leonardo's anatomical drawings, Picasso's Vollard Suite at the British Museum, last chance to see vintage photography of ancient ruins at James Hyman Gallery and exhibitions featuring Royal Academicians Anne Desmet and Philip Sutton are all in this week's wrap-up.

RA Schools’ students tend to see their three years of postgraduate study as a period to develop their work away from the glare of galleries and critics. But London-born artist Eddie Peake (b. 1981) has combined his time so far on the course with high-profile forays into the hyped-up wider art world.

A Pop Art conference at the ICA; Juan Muñoz at Frith Street Gallery; Glasgow's International Festival of Visual Art; last chance to see Joan Mitchell at Hauser & Wirth and a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum celebrates Power, Pageantry and the Thames.

'Out of Focus' is the first survey exhibition of photography that the Saatchi Gallery has presented since 'I Am a Camera' (2001), a show that was well-received by critics but caused distracting headlines for its presentation of pictures by Tierney Gearon featuring her two young children in the nude (public complaints caused the police to visit the gallery).

Edmund de Waal's bestselling family memoir The Hare with the Amber Eyes told the story of the Ephrussi banking dynasty's fortunes throughout 19th and 20th century Europe, from fabulous wealth and cultural prestige to Nazi persecution and the dispersal of the family across three continents. It is a book in which family, belonging and the meaning of collecting are all central themes; inspired by De...

Four recent works by the Melbourne-born, British-based artist Ron Mueck (pronounced ‘Mew-eck’) are on view for a month at Hauser & Wirth on Saville Row.

A Bond Street art stroll, John Piper at Dorchester Abbey, Stan Douglas at Victoria Miro, Giuseppe Cavalli at the Estorick Collection and Marcus Coates's film installation at Elephant & Castle.

Howard Hodgkin’s obsession with Indian art of the Mughal period (c.1560–1858) predates his career as a painter – he acquired his first Mughal work while still in short trousers, aged fourteen. Today his collection of approximately 115 paintings is considered one of the finest of its kind in private hands. This Sunday is the last opportunity to see the collection in its entirety, when its presentation...

‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch is one of the world’s most iconic paintings - will it become the world’s most expensive, when it is sold at Sotheby’s New York on 2 May? When I went to view it at Sotheby’s this week, it certainly exceeded all expectations.

In the second part of our focus on new prints from RA Editions, RA Schools graduate Liane Lang discusses her etching 'Europe (Albert Memorial)'.

In the first video of a two-part series on RA Editions, Stephen Chambers RA discusses the inspiration behind his work 'Double St. Joan' and the process of realising it in print.

David Mach RA's current installation in Southwark Cathedral, 'Die Harder', was first shown in 'Precious Light' and the 20-foot crucifixion is on display until Good Friday.

Caro at Chatsworth is the first exhibition dedicated to the work of a single artist to take place in the gardens of Chatsworth House. Featuring 15 sculptures by Sir Anthony Caro RA that span a 40-year period, the exhibition is sited around the Chatsworth canal pond with its dramatic Emperor Fountain.

Forget Spring - Summer is definitely in the air at the RA. As London basks in an unseasonal warm spell, how appropriate that the first Summer Exhibition entries have started to arrive.

It did not surprise me that on the morning after the private view of Prunella Clough's exhibition at Austin Desmond, a queue of people had already collected outside the gallery. Clough’s exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard (1999) and Tate Britain (2007) were similarly inundated by unexpected numbers of this modest artist’s audience, while her funeral service in 2000 was a testament to a singular reputation...

Emma Crichton-Miller explores the images of childhood, from photography to works by Gainsborough and Picasso, that will be on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 'Children's Lives'.

As the RA's Premiums exhibition draws to a close (tomorrow is your last chance to see work by these second-year postgraduate students in the RA Schools), here are three more interviews with this year's exhibiting artists.

The RA's new exhibition 'Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed' opens to the public tomorrow. Following on from our earlier video on Zoffany's 'The Tribuna of the Uffizi', here's curator Martin Postle on the story behind the exhibition's poster image - 'The Sharp Family'.

The Royal Academy's annual Premiums exhibition gives the public a chance to see the work of RA Schools students at an interim point in their three-year postgraduate studies.

'Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed' opens to the public this Saturday, 10 March. To whet your appetite, here's a fascinating introduction to what is arguably Zoffany's best painting - 'The Tribuna of the Uffizi' - by exhibition co-curator Martin Postle.

Bad boy behaviour, the whiff of scandal, weird sexual antics. No, it’s not ‘Sensation’, it’s Johan Zoffany RA, whose colourful life (1733–1810) and art demonstrate that the Georgian age was not always gracious and the path to artistic success never did run smooth.

Transatlantic dealers and gallerists Eykyn Maclean have launched their new London space with an exhibition of Cy Twombly works from the collection of Ileana Sonnabend.

In 1952, a group of eight young British sculptors burst onto the international scene at the XXVI Venice Biennale. The art historian Herbert Read coined the phrase 'the geometry of fear' to describe the work of this new generation, whose angular, spiky works seemed a deliberate departure from the monumental and rounded organic forms of earlier British sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth...

The coming week is your last chance to see a retrospective of work by Frederick Gore RA (1913-2009) at Richmond Hill Gallery, highlights of which include a number of Gore's classic landscapes of loactions including Greece, Majorca and France.

Visitors to David Hockney’s RA show have marvelled at his latest innovations in drawing and inventive use of technology. As 147 of his works on paper go on sale at Christie’s this week, the RA Magazine Blog explores the artist’s enduring exploration of new ways to draw.

As Lucian Freud's etchings go under the hammer at Christie's this week, RA Magazine Blog speaks to the artist's long-time master printmaker.

David Hockney RA's recent East Yorkshire landscapes play the starring role in his forthcoming show at the RA. Here, the exhibition's co-curator, Edith Devaney, explains what is special about this part of the country and how the artist's return to his roots shaped his artistic practice.

The new exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, 'United Enemies', explores the extraordinary period of adventure and liberation in sculpture during the 1960s and 1970s, as Richard Cork explains.

This exhibition at Pallant House, the first for nearly 25 years, is a timely reminder of the extraordinary nature of Edward Burra’s art.

The RA's major exhibition 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' is only weeks away and the exhibition's catalogue is currently in production. In the meantime, these two new Hockney books are hot off the press just in time for Christmas (and would make perfect stocking fillers).

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) loved to paint the landscape: he would sketch the Suffolk countryside, the skies with their fluffy white cumulous clouds, and the cattle and farmhands in the fields.

The American glass artist Dale Chihuly is well known in the UK, not least for his spectacular 27-foot chandelier that graces the front hall of the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was created on the occasion of his 2001 exhibition 'Chihuly at the V&A', which was followed in 2005 by a large site-specific installation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Christopher Le Brun was last night elected President of the Royal Academy. He succeeds Sir Nicholas Grimshaw PPRA who has stepped down after seven years in office.

There is an interesting split in Humphrey Ocean RA: he often wears bright colours – a dash of red or orange – and has an eternally cheerful, vivacious and optimistic disposition, yet he frequently paints grey scenes of post-war suburban buildings many people would overlook as, well, dull. This is particularly evident in his current exhibition in the glorious medieval chapel and buildings of Jesus...

To celebrate the forthcoming exhibition 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' (21 January - 9 April 2012) we've reproduced a selection of articles on David Hockney RA from the last 20 years of RA Magazine.

Listen to audio clips from our interview with Antony Gormley RA about his exhibition at the Hermitage.

Anthony Francis, an alumnus of the RA Schools, combines science and art on canvas by mixing silicone and oil paint. His new paintings form the show ‘Looking Glass Land’ at Sarah Myerscough Fine Art. The exhibition is a sea of colour. His works are bold, brightly-coloured, abstract phenomena, some of his canvases are flat, while others are built up into 3D relief.

Adrian Berg RA, who was elected to the Royal Academy in 1992, is recalled by his friend and fellow Academician Paul Huxley RA

Spring will come early to the Royal Academy, in the form of David Hockney RA’s monumental Yorkshire landscape The Arrival of Spring. And what a glorious spring it is.

The RA's Architecture Curator on the story behind The Future Memory Pavilion, Singapore (18 October – 19 November 2011)

Phyllida Barlow was recently elected a Royal Academician. Tomorrow (22 October) is your last chance to see her exhibition 'RIG' at Hauser & Wirth Piccadilly.

Collaged graph paper, ink and pigment floated on glass, coloured masking tape, embroidered wool, and several videos, are just some of the great variety of media – as well as of course the humble pencil on paper – that make up the 73 drawings shortlisted for the prestigious Jerwood Drawing Prize, on show until 30 October at the Jerwood Space near Tate Modern.

Small but perfectly formed, The Pavilion of Art and Design is instant gratification for the eyes. A select group of just over 50 galleries, mainly from continental Europe, show twentieth-century art and design in a tent pavilion in London's Berkeley Square. The atmosphere is calm, comfortable and uncrowded, made for careful looking. And the stands are designed to allow you to imagine yourself living...

Frieze Art Fair under a big white tent in Regent's Park is London's art circus, where art meets commerce and crowds throng to see the spectacle of it all. Click here for more Frieze week coverage

John Constable's The Leaping Horse is the latest work to star in the 'Masterpiece a Month' exhibition, celebrating 200 years of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The art world descends on London next week for Frieze Art Fair (13-16 October), the annual contemporary art jamboree that will see 170 galleries from around the world represented in a vast temporary pavilion in Regent’s Park.

Grayson Perry RA's exhibition at the British Museum opens today. The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman features objects chosen by Perry from the museum's collection, alongside new works by the artist that include drawings, embroidered wall hangings and the ceramics for which he is best known.

Browse and Darby, just around the corner from the Royal Academy, has put on an exhibition of Degas drawings and bronzes to coincide with 'Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement'. We visited with the RA's Degas curator, Ann Dumas, who selected some of her favourite works in the show.

When Jennifer Copley-May saw the summer issue of RA Magazine she did a double take: ‘Good Lord,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt!" Gazing out from the cover was the unmistakable face of Jennifer's aunt, Juliet Kepes.

In the recent issue of RA Magazine we explored the abundance of exhibitions opening in Paris this Autumn. We also recommend two additional exhibitions opening in Europe this season, 'Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities' in Florence and the Nahmad art dealing dynasty’s collection of modern masters in Zurich

What does a dancer make of Degas? Former prima ballerina Darcey Bussell CBE has visited the RA's 'Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement'. Here, she discusses the artist's special understanding of dance technique and picks out some of her favourite works in the exhibition.

Kate Goodwin, the RA's Architecture Curator, reflects on a recent trip to Singapore for a joint event with the British Council

If the words ‘chocolate box’ spring to mind when you see Degas’ ballerinas, then think again. Because, argues Ann Dumas, co-curator of Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, ‘Degas was one of the most radical, experimental artists of his day, fearlessly pushing beyond accepted boundaries in both subject and technique, and embracing the technological discoveries of the exciting age in which he...

We're posting the latest RA Magazine 'Out to lunch' feature here so we can show you the photos of the meal Eileen Cooper RA and RA Magazine Editor Sarah Greenberg shared.

Following on from this month's RA Magazine tributes to John Hoyland RA, who died on 31 July, Anthony Caro RA shares his memories.

In the latest issue of the RA Magazine, Edmund Fawcett takes us on a tour around Southern California to discover the highlights of 'Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA, 1945-1980'. The map below guides you around his picks of the participating venues.

As a tribute to John Hoyland RA, who died on 31 July, we're posting the conversation between Hoyland and Damien Hirst that appeared in the Autumn 2009 issue of RA Magazine (portrait by Jillian Edelstein). An obituary by Ian Ritchie RA will appear in the Autumn issue of RA Magazine, published 1 September 2011.

London Underground has unveiled the first of a series of artworks for Acts of Kindness, an art project by Michael Landy RA.

With the exception of the annual Schools Show, the RA Schools studios and workshop spaces are generally hidden from public view. This week, a group of RA patrons and Friends Ambassador Emilia Fox had a sneak peak into the world of the Schools in a behind-the-scenes printmaking workshop

Frank Bowling RA's current exhibition in the Tennant Gallery, Journeyings: Recent Works on Paper, coincides with the publication of a new book about Bowling's art by the critic Mel Gooding and published by the RA.

Anish Kapoor RA has been awarded the Praemium Imperiale award for outstanding contribution to sculpture. The imperial family of Japan, on behalf of the Japan Art Association, are presenting Kapoor with £115,000 (15 million yen), a diploma and a medal for his achievements in October.

Victoria Miro gallery in Hoxton has put on two outstanding shows of women artists, both remarkably different to one another. Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, creates over the top spotty sculptures, which provide an interesting contrast to Alice Neel’s thoughtful portraiture.

Running alongside the Summer Exhibition, the RA’s A-level Summer Exhibition Online provides a showcase for talented young artists of the future. Now in its fifth year, the current exhibition attracted over 900 submissions from students across the UK.

For ten days each year, the RA Schools Show sees the studios of the Royal Academy Schools transformed into stunning gallery spaces that showcase the work of the graduating class. We spoke to four of the students about their work and what it's like to study at the Schools.

Suffolk is not known as a contemporary art hot spot. But this year, a new exhibition has been set up in conjunction with the Aldeburgh Music Festival at the Snape Maltings site. Entitled ‘SNAP’, the show includes 12 contemporary artists. but is only on view up to and including this Sunday, 26 June, the end of the second week of the music festival. Luckily though, not all of the art will be disappearing...

Sotheby’s public view of top lots from its summer sales has some real gems. Whether or not you are going to bid for them, it is worth popping into the showrooms to take a look - it may be your last chance to see these fabulous works before they vanish into private collections.

It’s a strange object, to be sure. Is it some kind of warped industrial shed? In a way, yes. It’s Zaha Hadid’s Riverside Museum in Glasgow, the city’s new £74m museum of transport. Built in the postindustrial area of Clydebank at the point where the River Kelvin flows into the Clyde, it is a giant, fluid zigzag of a building.

The word masterpiece is being tossed around the art world with abandon these days, with Christie’s calling the public show of its top lots ‘Masterpieces’ and a major London art fair called ‘Masterpiece’ opening at the end of this month. Is this hyperbole, or are there any works worthy of the name? I went along to the Christie’s view in their King Street headquarters to find out.

The REcreative website, launched today by the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, aims to give young people an online arts community where they can share their work, watch interviews with leading artists and get behind-the-scenes insights on careers in the art world.

Axel Vervoordt's last two exhibitions at Palazzo Fortuny during the Biennale have become legendary for their beauty and, especially, the way they mix ancient and modern art, known and unknown artists, artefacts and masterpieces.

The Biennale sprawls outside of its original pavilion gardens – the Giardini – and takes over the city, which is part of the fun. I spent Wednesday looking at some of the pavilions outside the Giardini and seeing the Arsenale.

The week before the Summer Exhibition opens its doors to the public is a busy time at the Royal Academy. The first official event in a week rich with traditions old and new is Non-Members Varnishing Day, a uniquely colourful and festive occasion.

If my tour of the Giardini of the Biennale, is anything to go by, mazes are a big theme this year. Here are a few:

A vaporetto strike on the first day of the Venice Biennale does not bode well, especially when it begins at midnight and you're staying on an island that can only be accessed by boat.

We're posting the latest RA Magazine 'Out to lunch' feature here so we can show you the photos of the delicious food that architect Piers Gough RA and I enjoyed on our visit to NOPI.

David Chipperfield RA's new Hepworth Wakefield Museum is a triumph. From the outside, the jagged grey granite building perched above the River Calder looks stunning, even if its uncompromising modernity strikes a slightly forbidding note.

Visitors to the Royal Academy this week will have noticed a striking addition to the Annenberg Courtyard. Specially created for the Summer Exhibition, 'Coloring Book' by Jeff Koons Hon RA consists of highly reflective stainless steel with a surface decoration of brightly coloured swirls, and was unwrapped over the course of several hours early on Sunday.

Last weekend's opening of Turner Contemporary saw a reported 15,000 visitors flock to the stunning new Margate art gallery designed by David Chipperfield RA. The gallery's first exhibition, 'Revealed: Turner Contemporary Opens', features work by six contemporary artists, four of whom created new work for the occasion, inspired - like the gallery's namesake JMW Turner - by the scenery of the North...

The Royal Academy's current Tennant Gallery exhibition, 'Ivor Abrahams: Mystery and Imagination' brings together the artist's 'Edgar Allan Poe' and 'Edmund Burke' print portfolios from the 1970s. Poe in particular has captured the imagination of generatons of artists. In the film below, Abrahams explains how Poe's richly metaphoric writings - a precursor to the symbolist movement - inspired his...

It's an exciting time at the Royal Academy this week as entries arrive for the Summer Exhibition, the world's largest open-submission contemporary art exhibition. In the video below, some of this year's entrants tell us about their work, why they've decided to enter and what it would mean to them to be selected for the show.

Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry is the latest artist to be elected to the ranks of the Royal Academicians. Perry was elected in the category of Printmaking at a recent RA General Assembly.

In the film below, the curators of 'Watteau: The Drawings', Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, describe Watteau's masterful 'trois crayons' drawing technique that characterises many of the works in the exhibition.

RA Magazine Editor Sarah Greenberg looks around the world to select her favourite exhibitions and new museums this Spring.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) has long been considered an art-historical man of mystery. Even his friends and contemporary biographers complained that they barely knew him. Indeed Watteau’s art and life remain as elusive as the figures in his drawings, which are about to go on display at the RA in the first major exhibition of these works in Britain.

'Masterworks: Architecture at the Royal Academy' is on until 13 March in the John Madejski Fine Rooms. In the video below, curator Neil Bingham introduces the exhibition and covers some of the highlights of this survey of the Royal Academy's collection of drawings and models by celebrated British architects.

We're reporting on each of the events in the RA's free salon series for GSK Contemporary - Aware. Tonight the event saw us step into the world of secrets, stories and social history hidden within our own wardrobes and those of others.

In tonight's event Hilary Rose, Caterina Radvan and Nigel Hartley explored the psychology of fashion in relation to illness and how, after death, the protective and comforting aspects of clothing are no longer essential, but their symbolic values may remain.

Emma Crichton-Miller and Peter Murray give us the low-down on the best from the UK's crop of Spring exhibitions.

We're reporting on each of the events in the RA's free salon series for GSK Contemporary - Aware. Tonight, Helen Storey and Professor Tony Ryan tell us how they’re changing the landscape of the fashion industry, why revolution won’t work and how the very clothes you wear could one day help mop up environmental pollution.

Each year the Premiums exhibition gives the public a chance to see the work of RA Schools students at an interim point in their three-year postgraduate studies. The exhibition reflects the diversity of practice at the Schools and this year is no exception; with painting, sculpture, video and photography all represented. We spoke to three of the students about their work, and discovered some interesting...

For the fifth in the series of salons Helen Palmer (WGSN), Martin Raymond and Chris Sanderson (The Future Laboratory), and Suzanne Lee (University of the Arts, London) offer us a tantalising glimpse into the world of fashion forecasting.

We're reporting on each of the events in the RA's free salon series for GSK Contemporary - Aware. From X Factor winner Matt Cardle's biceps to Lady Gaga and the art of pastiche, tonight's conversation asked how identities are constructed and performed through fashion. Key themes included celebrity, psychology and the history of fancy dress.

The politics of tartan, whether knitting is cool, the unravelling of personal history and the fallacy of authenticity were all strands woven together in tonight's discussion. Participants include artist Yinka Shonibare, Carol Tulloch (Victoria & Albert Museum), Dr. Jonathan Faiers (Central St. Martins) and artist Freddie Robins

We're reporting on each of the events in the RA's free salon series for GSK Contemporary - Aware. Second in the series is Storeytellers of Fashion. Participants include blogger Susie Lau, set designer Hattie Spice, Editor-in-chief Perry Curties (125 Magazine) and Dr. Agnès Rocamora (London College of Fashion).

We're reporting on each of the events in the RA's free salon series for GSK Contemporary - Aware. First up: The Artist's Robe: Adornment and Identity. Participants include Artist Grayson Perry, Professor Reina Lewis (London College of Fashion) and Dr. Emma Tarlo (Goldsmiths)

The incongruous sight of a dry stone wall shed taking shape in the Royal Academy's classical courtyard has had visitors scratching their heads in recent weeks.

Modern British Sculpture opens at the Royal Academy in just over a week, and today the RA and BBC Four announced a new collaboration - 'Sculpture on Screen' - that will give sculpture fans the chance to enjoy a feast of arts broadcasting during the run of the exhibition.

Last year we introduced you to the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, a programme of activities for young people and the joint effort of five London galleries including the Royal Academy. The fruits of their labours can now be seen in 'Art Imposters' a free exhibition in the gallery at Louis Vuitton Maison in New Bond Street.

In the last video blog in our Glasgow Boys series, curator MaryAnne Stevens introduces James Patterson's 'Moniaive' and explains how the painter's 'portable studio' for working outdoors influenced his work, along with the use of photography.

Formerly a fashion designer, Helen Storey has more recently investigated how science, art and fashion might come together in leading the way for a more sustainable future. Her installation 'Say Goodbye', commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts and supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry, is a key work in the current exhibition GSK Contemporary - Aware: Art Fashion Identity at 6 Burlington...

The work of Stephen Farthing RA often refers to his fascination with art history and this is certainly true of his current Artists' Laboratory exhibition at the RA. Many of the drawings and paintings displayed were produced as a creative response to his role as editor of the book '1001 Paintings to See Before You Die'.

The RA's Kate Goodwin travelled to China recently on a design curators' study tour organised by the British Council. In part two of a series of photo-essays for this blog, she reports on Shanghai - a melting pot of architectural styles with thriving creative industries, and a domestic tourism powerhouse thanks to the city's recent World Expo.

Titled 'Work and Play, London and New York'; Chris Orr RA's current exhibition at Jill George Gallery in Soho features a range of prints and drawings of iconic city scenes. From Times Square teeming with colour and human activity to a bird's eye view of traffic in Lambeth, Orr's eye for detail reveals the complex pageantry of urban life with wry humour.

Continuing our video blog series on 'Glasgow Boys', curator Roger Billcliffe introduces James Guthrie's painting 'To Pastures New', which was first shown at the RA in 1883.

Images and text come together in the second exhibition in the RA's Artists' Laboratory series, which opens this week and features work by Stephen Farthing RA. In the video below, the artist discusses the ethos behind the exhibition, called 'The Back Story', and gives the literal back story of one of the show's key works.

In the second video in our 'Glasgow Boys' series, curator Hugh Stevenson of Glasgow Museums gives an introduction to John Lavery's famous painting 'The Tennis Party' (1885).

The RA's Kate Goodwin travelled to China recently on a design curators' study tour organised by the British Council. In part one of a series of photo-essays for this blog, she reports on the burgeoning design and architectural scene in Beijing.

Whimsicially romantic but often tinged with melancholy, artist Rob Ryan's distinctive works effortlessly bridge the worlds of art and design. After a flurry of creative collaborations, the artist has returned to his characteristically elaborate papercuts in a new solo show with TAG Fine Arts, just around the corner from the RA.

'There is no new thing under the sun… All is vanity and vexation of spirit… ' The oft-quoted words of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes might take a somewhat bleak view of the futility human existence, but it's the same Biblical tome that exhorts us more cheerfully to 'eat, drink and be merry', accept the transitory nature of life and take pleasure in the here and now....

With the exhibition 'Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys 1880 – 1900' opening this weekend, we'll be bringing you a series of videos over the next week or so that feature key works from the exhibition. The first video, below, introduces the star of the RA's poster campaign for the exhibition: 'The Druids – Bringing in the Mistletoe' (1890) by George Henry and E.A. Hornel.

The temporary art city that is Frieze Art Fair has decamped from Regent's Park. The gallerists have departed, James Fujiyama's fantasy archeological dig has been dug up, Spartacus Chetwynd's performative Cat Bus has driven back to the depot and Annika Ström's Ten Embarrassed Men have left the building. But fear not - a number of our Frieze Week top contemporary art picks around London remain open...

Simon Schama – the charismatic historian, polymath and now adviser to David Cameron – delivered an intriguing and original lecture entitled ‘Beasts and Beastliness in Contemporary Art’ as a special FT VIP event for Frieze.

After compiling our map of Frieze week events around London, the blog team made it to the event itself. Check out the short film below for some highlights of this year's fair.

RA Magazine Editor Sarah Greenberg maps out her top shows and events of Frieze week. With mobile-friendly map and print-friendly listings.

Two Royal Academicians are contributing to a new campaign that aims to resurrect the holiday postcard while raising money for Comic Relief.

Like many historic buildings in London, the Royal Academy has its fair share of ghost stories - and artist Blue Firth collects them. The RA Schools student's work deals with creating a 'supernatural archive' of Burlington House. Her research has now entered a new stage - a late night vigil in the RA Schools, open to members of the public.

Jointly organised by The Royal Parks and the Serpentine Gallery, 'Turning the World Upside Down' sees four of Anish Kapoor's highly reflective stainless steel works placed in Kensington Gardens. With video

RA Magazine visits Horace Walpole's Gothic fantasy castle on the eve of its public opening after a lengthy rebuilding and restoration project. With video

On entering Treasures from Budapest, the first thing you see is the beautifully carved St Andrew Altarpiece. One of the most striking works on display, this sixteenth-century work towers over the atmospherically lit Central Hall. In this audio slideshow, exhibition co-curator Joanna Norman explains just what it is about the altarpiece that makes it such an unusual work of art.

The London Design Festival is well underway and with more than 250 events and exhibitions taking place across the capital, it can seem somewhat overwhelming. Icon magazine's design trail booklet is a useful guide to the highlights. Unveiled yesterday, the pocket-sized guide lists around 100 recommendations and can be picked up at any of the festival's participating venues.

These days it seems we all need a plan B, and the artist Thomas Scheibitz calls attention to this in the title of his new show, ‘A moving Plan B’, that opened last night at Spruth Magers Gallery, a five-minute walk from the RA.

Starting this week, the Royal Academy's new Artists' Laboratory programme is an opportunity to explore the less familiar and experimental elements of the work of Royal Academicians. The first exhibition in the series features the work of Ian McKeever RA.

The Royal Academy's Architecure Curator, Kate Goodwin, provides a special report from Venice on the opening days of the 12th Architecture Biennale.

Who at some point has not felt like Jacob wrestling with the angel? The Bible tells of a mortal struggling with the Divine, holding fast to the angel all through the night and refusing to let go until, at dawn, he prevails and receives a blessing – an answer to his prayers.

The RA’s A-level Summer Exhibition Online runs in parallel to the Summer Exhibition. Now in its fourth year, it provides a great opportunity to see work by potential artists of the future. Any student at A-level in the UK can enter, and this year the RA received over 1,300 submissions from across the country and selected work by 56 students to present online.

RA Schools was a hive of youthful energy this week, as some 30 young people who regularly take part in education programmes at five London galleries – the RA, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery and Hayward Gallery – were brought together for the first Summer Academy of the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project. The week-long series of workshops, talks and other activities primed...

Fans of David Mach RA's gorilla in the Summer Exhibition can expect more large-scale coat hanger sculptures to come, with a new project announced this week.

If you enjoyed last issue's interview with David Nash RA about his landmark exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, why not listen to the recording of his recent Royal Academy evening talk. He is joined in conversation by Peter Murray OBE, Executive Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and renowned art critic Dr Richard Cork.

Past President of the Royal Academy Phillip King has been known for his sculpture – big, abstract, colourful work – since the sixties. You can see his work in lots of places: the Sidgwick site on the Cambridge University campus and Cass Sculpture Foundation at Goodwood have permanent displays and Gloucester Cathedral shows a piece this autumn, but what he has on display at Flowers Cork Street is...

Keeping the RA's Annenberg Courtyard relatively pigeon-free so visitors can enjoy the outdoor cafe without fending off skyborne raids is an ongoing effort, and it's the ancient art of falconry that best does the trick. Read more

What do Facebook and the Hilton at Heathrow have in common? Nothing, or so I thought until listening to Ballardian Architecture: Inner and Outer Space – a symposium held at the Royal Academy in May, which highlighted the relationship between science fiction writer JG Ballard, architecture and contemporary society. Read more

Painted by a very young John Singer Sargent, 'Atlantic Storm' will soon become a familiar sight for London commuters as the posters for 'Sargent and the Sea' go up across the capital. In this two minute video, Royal Academy of Arts curator Ann Dumas gives an insight into the story behind this striking image. Read more

Howard Hodgkin's new exhibition 'Time and Place' at Modern Art Oxford is something of a stylistic departure. Hodgkin is a reputedly private man. Rarely does anyone see him in the act of making, even his long-term partner Antony Peattie. His work, as a result, emits a kind of intimacy that underscores his bold marks and colours. The 25 paintings on show in Oxford have been made within the last ten...

Why do galleries and auction houses keep saying they want to be more like museums? Despite their riches, do they crave the cultural kudos that only distinguished curators and an adoring public can confer? Or is it more of a marketing technique to lure in new buyers and press and lift the value of their art to ‘museum quality’? Perhaps it's a bit of both.

The RA Schools is a unique environment – the only UK institution to offer a three-year, full-time postgraduate fine arts course. Tucked into the back of Burlington House, this network of corridors, offices and studios is normally a hive of behind-the-scenes activity (and perhaps the odd haunting). But for ten days each year, the annual Schools Show sees the doors thrown open and the historic studios...

When is the last time you were announced in a receiving line, invited to wear medals and heralded with trumpet fanfares? Unless you frequent diplomatic parties, it’s an experience from another century and one of the rituals that makes the RA’s Annual Dinner such a spectacular and eccentric experience.

What is it about British summer traditions that calls for a steel band? We all expect it for the Ashes, but for art? Anyone who was in Piccadilly yesterday late morning would have noticed the extraordinary sight of a steel band stopping traffic and leading a merry band of Royal Academicians to a Calypso beat with hundreds of artists in tow. The procession led to St James’s Piccadilly for a blessing...

Ending this Saturday, Tacita Dean’s feature-length film ‘Craneway Event’ is a must-see. Read more here