I took it personally: Rejects, the exhibition for artists rejected by the Royal Academy | Art and design

IIf you read about the Guardians' recent evisceration of the Royal Academy's summer exhibition as a miserable garden party of bland good taste, and feel bad for the artists involved, spare a thought for those who weren't even admitted.

Because while the RA selected 1,700 artworks to be exhibited this year, nearly 10 times as many were rejected. Which means that someone judged them to be of lower quality than the ones our critic Jonathan Jones called lukewarm, polite and useless. Ouch!

Don't feel bad anymore. Because some of these poor, neglected souls are about to see their rejected work get a second chance in an exhibition that doesn't rely so much on the idea of ​​rejection as on its willful collapse.

“I saw people on Instagram posting these incredible pieces of art saying they had been rejected,” says gallery owner Shona Bland. “It was such a shame that they weren’t being exhibited. I thought I had to do something about it.”

Bland put out a call for other artists whose work had not been selected for the RA, and quickly assembled a small group of talented artists whose rejected works this year included everything from homoerotic screenprints to underwater photography.

Being rejected is a big part of being an artist, Bland says. It’s not really a reflection on the quality of the work. Indeed, the list of names who have already received the exhibition’s cold shoulder includes Édouard Manet, RA president Rebecca Salter and Banksy, who was rejected from the 2018 show after submitting a work under the anagrammatic name Bryan S Gaakman (the academy eventually hung his work after asking him to submit it under his famous name).

Hannah Pratt has been rejected by the RA four or five times now. Rejection is a feeling I know very well, let’s put it that way! she says, a little playfully. Being part of the RA’s summer exhibition is a big deal for Pratt. When she was a child, her mother took her to see the show every year, and she dreams of being able to show her own work on the walls. It would be a great step, she concedes. And professionally, it’s a show that many gallery owners and collectors participate in.

Pratt started out as a painter, but gradually moved into different mediums to arrive at what she does today: intricate textile works inspired by her love of science. The work rejected this year is part of her Colour of Starlight series, in which she uses AI to determine the colours of constellations, then creates a piece from threads that match those colours. It’s beautiful and technically challenging work, so she gets depressed when she sees some of the bizarre things she sees. do be accepted into the RA show?

“I’m going to be diplomatic and say there are things that aren’t to my taste,” she says. “But there are always gems. And the quality of the work, overall, is really good. It’s all very well done.”

Pratt says art schools help toughen artists up because they’re constantly forced to justify their work to teachers. Still, when she first faced failure, it hurt. Artists are generally sensitive, and yet we’re asked to have thick skin, she says. Sometimes rejection can be particularly hard on Pratt. “I have quite severe dyslexia and dyspraxia, so if I have to write a really long funding application, it often takes me days. You might think, ‘Oh my God, that took ages!’ But I’ve generally learned to get over it and move on. There are always other opportunities.”

The reason Bland wanted to organize the Rejects exhibition is because her own experience in the art world is one of rejection: “I don’t have a degree in art history and because of that, I never got a chance in this industry,” she says. She ended up starting her own gallery. Friend of the artswhich has become a welcoming space for creatives and art lovers who might normally be put off by the industry’s snobbery and art-speak. Rejection can be positive, she says, noting that if she had been accepted for some of the many jobs she applied for, she might never have had the opportunity to pursue this exciting project.

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Another artist in the exhibition, Craig Keenanmakes cyanotypes, a type of cameraless photography that uses UV light and iron salts to create bright blue prints. Keenan says he had a lot of success as an artist from a young age, often being accepted or shortlisted for various awards and exhibitions. So when the RA told him his work wouldn’t be part of their summer show seven years ago, it was a major blow. “I took it very personally,” he says. “But in a way, it got me used to being rejected, which is part of being an artist.”

Today, he’s much more receptive to how his work unfolds. “All my work is blue and white,” he says. “Of course, it’s not going to be for everybody.”

It also probably helps that Keenan has seen both sides of the RA Summer Show. His work has been rejected multiple times, but also accepted twice. He is living proof that being rejected does not mean you will always be rejected in the future.

Breaking the taboo surrounding rejection is something Bland hopes to achieve with her show. She's even created a line of REJECTS buttons and tote bags. And, on InstagramArtists shared their past failures in the comments sections. According to Bland, about 400 artists applied to participate in this year's exhibition, which is far more than she is allowed to do.

So wait a minute, does this mean some people got rejected from REJECTS?!

Um, yeah, Bland said, a little nervously, before deciding. Maybe it could go on, with a show of rejects for the rejects?