LONDON.- The Royal Academician, Eileen Cooper, is the co-ordinator of the 249th Summer Exhibition. Given her long and distinguished teaching career, Cooper brings her experience and knowledge of diverse practices to the Summer Exhibition 2017. She has extended the reach of the exhibition to include more works from artists across the world as well as artists working in differing media, exploring and celebrating the new energy of the next generation.

To support this vision, Eileen Cooper and the Summer Exhibition Hanging Committee have invited international artists to exhibit in a range of media throughout the galleries. These include Julie Born Schwartz, Hassan Hajjaj, Secundino Hernández, Isaac Julien, Tomoaki Suzuki and Mark Wallinger. For the first time, the Summer Exhibition also includes an element of performance art.

Further highlights of the Summer Exhibition 2017 include Yinka Shonibare RA’s Wind Sculpture VI in the Royal Academy’s Annenberg Courtyard. At over 6 metres in height, this impressive sculpture explores the notion of harnessing motion and freezing it in a moment of time. Returning to the artist’s use of Dutch wax textiles, Wind Sculpture VI manifests as a large three-dimensional piece of fabric that appears to be blowing in reaction to the natural elements.

Farshid Moussavi RA has been curating the Architecture Gallery within the Summer Exhibition. For the first time, this gallery celebrates architecture by focusing on construction coordination drawings – the drawings which show the full complexity of a building. This gallery features works by Royal Academicians including the newly elected David Adjaye and Richard Rogers, together with Grafton Architects, Bjarke Ingels, Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura, amongst others.

Other Royal Academicians featuring this year include Gilbert & George, who are showing a new large-scale work from their ‘Beard Speak’ series, along with Phyllida Barlow, Antony Gormley, Sean Scully, Bob and Roberta Smith and Wolfgang Tillmans. Honorary Academicians include Marina Abramović, Jim Dine and Mimmo Paladino.

The Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open submission exhibition. Around 1200 works have gone on display, the majority of which are for sale offering visitors an opportunity to purchase original artwork by high profile and up-and-coming artists. It has been held every year without interruption since 1769 and continues to play a significant part in raising funds to finance the current students of the RA Schools.