“Our idea for the summer exhibition is so bloody uncooked it could be steak tartare!”
Summer Lovin’
Citizens of New York and Paris are notorious for fleeing their host cities in the summer months whilst we Londoners prefer to stick it out, sweating through July heat waves or dampened by the August downpours and complaining about whichever weather system we are given in equal measure. But whatever happens to the sky above London this summer, aberrant intends to make the experience of staying in the capital more pleasant for everyone.
To this end, we spent the majority of the week completing our entry for a competition to uncover hidden parts of London. We won’t tell you all about it just yet – architecture competitions are meant to be anonymous after all – but keep an eye out for us on the Southbank between May and July*.
And no sooner had we entered one competition to titivate every Londoner’s watery eye than we turned our minds to the next jewel in the summer calendar – the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The theme for this year’s event is ‘raw’ and the recently ennobled architect, Sir David Chipperfield, is curating the architecture room inside Burlington House.
He is being joined on the selection and hanging committee by Norman Foster and Michael Hopkins and the trio of architects are on the look out for “work that exposes ideas and concepts as opposed to work that is more concerned with presentation and salesmanship.”
Now, if that doesn’t sound like aberrant architecture I don’t know what does. We’re so raw we left it to the last minute to sign up for our entry forms and our idea for the summer exhibition is so bloody uncooked it could be steak tartare!
But trash-talking aside, the closing date for architecture submissions is 6th of May, so we still have a bit of time to garnish the raw beef.
(*Note: if you don’t see us on the Southbank or in the Royal Academy this summer, it means that: (i) the judges must have overlooked our submissions; and (ii) it won’t be our fault if the summer turns out to be rubbish. Though if it does rain, you can always come and see us at the V&A studio instead. Also, we all know that it’s the taking part that counts.)
Operation Blunt II: This time there won’t be blood!
In preparation for our second schools’ workshop, we have ordered retractable craft knives for the kids to use in place of the scalpels that scared the bejesus out of us first time around.
There’s been some mention of adding glue guns to the arsenal of weapons available to the children – provided “special procedures” are put in place – but we’ll be standing down the representative from St John Ambulance and lobbying hard for the reinstatement of the trusty Pritt Stick.
Otherwise, we can’t wait for our second stab at teaching school children next week.