Exhibition

No New Thing Under the Sun

21 Oct 2010 – 9 Jan 2011

Regular hours

Thursday
11:00 – 16:00
Friday
11:00 – 16:00
Saturday
11:00 – 16:00
Sunday
11:00 – 16:00

Cost of entry

Free

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About

No New Thing Under the Sun brings together selected historical pieces from the Royal Academy Collection with works by contemporary artists. Around 50 works spanning the last 500 years are featured. Inspired by the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, this exhibition is about time, transience, and human vanity; about the grandeur of life, and the inevitability of death. Though not a religious or dogmatic show, the exhibition is a response to the scripture and aims to evoke the book's mood. In offering a pause for consideration and reflection on the human condition, the exhibition allows viewers to connect with the sorts of simple truths that are overlooked in our hectic world, and ends by suggesting a sense of joy at being alive in the here and now. Mixing together exhibits by contemporary artists with carefully selected drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures and paintings from the RA Collection, the show offers a wide variety of ideas to do with life and death: from the cynical to the celebratory, from the rational to the magical, from the astonishingly gruesome to the tenderly poignant. Ultimately it points to a broader philosophy about the nature of art itself, posing the question: can there be anything new under the sun? Artists featured in the exhibition include: Marius Bercea, Pavel Buchler, Patrick Caulfield, John Constable, Tacita Dean, Gilad Efrat, Tracey Emin, Roland Flexner, James Gillray, Peter Harrap, Cantemir Hausi, William Hogarth, Idris Khan, Natasha Kissell, Ciprian Muresan, Eadweard Muybridge, Christopher Orr, Samuel Palmer, Seb Patane, GB Piranesi, Muntean / Rosenblum, Victor Racataau, Gideon Rubin, Daniel Silver, George Stubbs, Amikam Toren, Julian Trevelyan, JMW Turner, and Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor. Curated by Gabriel Coxhead, with assistant curator Peter Harrap, in collaboration with Nick Savage, Head of Collections and Library at the Royal Academy.

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