London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
There’s quite a bit to be said for local knowledge.
London rewards it.
Not just knowing where things are.
Knowing when things are.
Knowing that for the next fortnight, if you get your timing exactly right, you can enjoy one of London’s most interesting exhibitions and one of London’s best walks in the same morning.
And hardly anybody seems to know about it.
Now tomorrow the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opens.
That’s one of London’s great annual occasions.
Thousands of works.
Thousands of visitors.
Crowds.
Queues.
Buzz.
Excitement.
And quite right too.
But tucked away in the same building is another exhibition.
Smaller.
Quieter.
Less famous.
Free.
The Royal Academy Schools Show.
It finishes on June 28th.
And in some ways I find it even more fascinating than the Summer Exhibition.
Because these artists are not established names.
Not yet.
You’re not looking at careers that have happened.
You’re looking at careers that might happen.
That’s a different kind of excitement.
The Royal Academy itself got going in 1768.
Think about that for a moment.
William Hogarth had died only four years earlier.
Future American presidents Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were one-year-old toddlers.
And Captain James Cook was preparing to set sail aboard HMS Endeavour on the first of his great voyages of discovery.
I rather like that coincidence.
Cook heading out into the unknown.
The Royal Academy setting out on its own voyage of discovery.
One exploring oceans.
The other exploring art.
One looking for new lands.
The other looking for new talent.
And here we are, more than two and a half centuries later, still watching the voyage unfold.
The Royal Academy Schools remain one of the most coveted places in British art education.
Tiny numbers.
Ferocious competition.
Three years of postgraduate study.
And remarkably, no tuition fees.
Every year a small group of young artists arrives there with talent, ambition, uncertainty, ideas and dreams.
And every year they emerge blinking into the daylight and present their work to the world.
Which brings me to Lolly Adams.
Now if you’re looking for watercolours of village churches or tasteful paintings of roses in a vase, Lolly Adams may not be your artist.
One of her works is called “Lard Spanking Machine.”
Another is called “Poodle Butterfly Pissing in a Pool.”
There’s “Hairy Meatball on Chaise Lounge.”
And “Pecked Out Eyeball.”
And “Grandad’s Tooth Poster.”
And “Toilet Brush Boys.”
I ask you.
How could you not want to know more?
And then there are the materials.
Steel.
Lard.
Microwave.
Compressor.
Electronics.
PVC strip curtains.
Synthetic hair.
Plastic.
Vinyl.
At which point you can do one of two things.
You can roll your eyes and mutter darkly about modern art.
Or you can do what I did.
Lean in.
Get curious.
Wonder what on earth is going on.
Because curiosity is where art starts.
And here’s the thing.
I really liked the work.
Genuinely.
It’s edgy.
It’s full of flair.
It’s pushing at boundaries.
The pieces stop you.
They draw you in.
You find yourself circling round them, taking another look, wondering how on earth somebody came up with the idea in the first place.
There’s confidence there.
Imagination.
A willingness to take risks.
Not every work landed for me. That would be asking too much. Art isn’t horse racing and we’re not awarding points out of ten.
But I came away thinking that Lolly Adams has something.
A distinctive voice.
And if I were a betting man, I’d be putting quite a few of my chips on the Lolly Adams square.
Twenty years from now I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to hear her name. Hear it over and over again.
Which, come to think of it, is one of the great pleasures of the Royal Academy Schools Show.
You’re seeing artists before the rest of the world catches up with them.
You’re seeing explorers.
Not explorers of oceans and continents.
Explorers of ideas.
Explorers of possibilities.
People sailing their own little Endeavours into unknown waters.
Ok, now let’s get practical. Here’s where local knowledge comes in.
The Royal Academy opens at ten o’clock.
The Schools Show is compact.
Forty minutes is plenty.
And five minutes away, at 10.45 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, London Walks’ Old Mayfair Walk sets off from Green Park Underground Station.
Which means you can do both.
One of those perfect London combinations.
A free exhibition of emerging artists.
Followed by the champagne and caviar of London Walks.
Our Mayfair walk.
Mayfair. Bless it.
A district of elegance, wealth, ambition and astonishing stories.
So, to sum up, take stock.
Young artists imagining the future.
Then streets steeped in the past.
All within a few hundred yards of one another.
That’s London.
Not just a city of places.
A city of conjunctions.
Of happy accidents.
Of things that happen to be next door to other things.
A city that rewards curiosity.
And rewards local knowledge.
A free exhibition that ends on June 28th.
A walk that starts five minutes away.
A little window of opportunity that opens for a fortnight and then disappears.
That’s the sort of thing I love about London.
The city is always offering little opportunities like this.
But you have to know where to look.
And perhaps more importantly, when to look.
London rewards local knowledge.
For the next fortnight, Mayfair is proving the point.
See you tomorrow.