Find out more about the Royal Academy’s upcoming retrospective of the artist, running from the 21st September until the 10th December.
On display from September, the Royal Academy will present a large retrospective of Michael Craig-Martin RA’s work over a sixty year career.
Curated in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will bring together over 120
important works spanning from the 1960s through to the present day, including sculpture, installation, painting and drawing, as well as newly conceived works for the occasion.
The works presented as part of the exhibition will be presented chronologically, including early works in which the artist used found objects such as buckets, milk bottles and mirrors for his work to show the origins in the way in which he worked.
Meanwhile, another section of the exhibition will highlight how a new focus on drawing gave rise to Craig-Martin’s large-scale wall drawings in tape, executed with the use of projections.
During the course of the exhibition, it will also present the many facets of Craig-Martin’s painting practice, including his depictions of single objects that highlight how his motifs have changed over time; the buckets and ladders of post-industrial life in the West give way to mobile phones and iPads. These will be displayed alongside works such as Untitled (Painting), 2010 (Gagosian, London), in which the artist explores the relationship between text and image. The following space will be dedicated to his
reworkings of iconic works from art and design, such as Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) andMies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair (1929).
The conclusion of the exhibition will focus on works conceived specifically for the exhibition. One of the gallery spaces will feature a large-scale, immersive and dynamic digital experience with floor-to-ceiling projected images, while the Central Hall will be transformed in to a site-specific, vibrantly coloured installation that engages with the architecture of the space.
Beyond the gallery spaces in which the exhibition is being held, the Annenberg Courtyard will display a number of Craig-Martin’s monumental and colourful line sculptures of commonplace objects.
To book tickets for the exhibition visit: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/michael-craig-martin