I didn’t expect the first thing I’d see at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition preview party to be a mac ‘n’ cheese van. Yet, as I tactically tottered in my heels underneath the building’s ornate archway, and into the museum’s famous Annenberg Courtyard for its annual societal bash, there it was to my left. A small, blue van much like the kind you’d find on the muddied fields of Glastonbury Festival, serving up some good greasy grub to the most glittering crowd in London – and there was a long queue.
The Summer Exhibition is nothing if not eclectic. Held every year since 1769, it’s the world’s largest open-submission contemporary art show, with works from all over the world judged by a rotating committee operating around a single theme. This year, as chosen by internationally acclaimed architect Farshif Moussavi, that theme was “dialogues”, a dedication to art’s “capacity to forge dialogues and to afford us sensitivity towards societal concerns, such as ecology, survival and living together.
