Review: RHS London Botanical Art Show

I visited the RHS London Botanical Art and Photography Show last week. It felt very odd to be visiting some four days after it opened when I'm normally be there from preview night to chucking out time on the second day of the exhibition in the Lindley Hall.

However the exhibition was cancelled in 2020. It then became clear that the 2021 exhibition might not be held as planned - and a decision was taken to move it to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea so it was held at the same time as the Chelsea Flower Show nearby - which was being held much later in the year - in September instead of May. 

I'm going to comment more about the changes in the exhibition and implications for both the art and photography show in the next post. 

​I've also written about:

1. the RHS Botanical Art Awards 2021
2. my Review: The RHS Botanical Photography Show AND
3. the Highgrove Florilegium Show - also held at the same time as the RHS Chelsea Show. See my blog post The Highgrove Florilegium on splendid display in Chelsea. I also saw this on Tuesday  at The Garrison (Guards) Chapel, Chelsea Barracks (link to location on Google Maps) 

THIS POST focuses on the 15 exhibits in the exhibition and my thoughts on them and their characteristics that earn them different coloured medals.

Four paintings from Francesca Ross's excellent Gold Medal winning exhibit of the development of the flower and fruits of Tomatoes

Facts about the RHS Botanical Art Show in London
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​First some facts.....

What's the same as usual

All exhibitors have applied to the Royal Horticultural Society to exhibit after

• either a selection process to get approval to exhibit
• or previously winning a medal in an exhibition.

Artists then have a period of five years to submit their artwork after gaining approval or a medal. ​You can read more about this on my page dedicated to RHS Botanical Art Shows.

Medals awarded for the artwork hung in the show are determined by a Panel of Judges (see #5 How botanical artwork is judged at the RHS Show on my dedicated page) who comprise experienced botanical artists, botanists and/or horticulturalists and RHS officers who aim to moderate standards across the RHS as a whole. I've known an artist in the past who found her exhibit being judged by a panel which included the UK's leading horticultural expert on her plant!

There are four types of Royal Horticultural Society Medal available for awards to exhibits. These are: Gold; Silver-Gilt; Silver and Bronze. It's not unknown for no award to be made - as has happened this year.

​In general it is assumed that those approved to exhibit are ALL capable of submitting an exhibit which could at least win a silver medal.

When judging, exhibits of groups of drawings or paintings are assessed first and foremost as botanical illustration i.e. NOT just 'nice paintings of flowers'.

What you need to know about why this exhibition is different
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Gallery 1 of the RHS Botanical Art Show at the Saatchi Gallery

This year there has been

• a change of venue - from the RHS Lindley Hall to the Saatchi Gallery
• a change of process for presenting the exhibit and hanging the show. This was based on the fact that a number of exhibitors might not be able to travel. So the Saatchi Gallery have organised framing and text label and the hang - which has not been without problems. I'll comment more on this tomorrow.
• the dates of the exhibition have been extended. It's now open for three weeks until Saturday 9th October 2021

​However.....

All aspects of the the display are considered, including the technical skill of the artist, the botanical and horticultural content of the picture and the nature and scale of the project as a whole. Only an artist who has excelled in all areas is awarded a Gold Medal.
Panel explaining the process in the exhibition

So, in effect, the scaled marking system for the exhibits MUST have changed this year since artists did not have control over or the final say on 

• how their exhibit was presented and hung and
• what words accompanied it.

​Of which more in the next post.

​A Commentary (Part 3)
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Exhibits which impressed me
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Exhibits can impress at different levels:

• as a unique exhibit of a type not presented before;
• from a distance OR up close and with a magnifier out AND/OR both!
• the content from a botanical or horticultural perspective;
• the ambition of the project;
• innovation e.g. new plant, new way of presenting a plant in artwork;
• when you find out about the background to the exhibit - and the years / work which has gone into it.

In this instance, this last aspect will receive further comment in my final post due to the extraordinarily BRIEF narrative accompanying each exhibit. Background to an exhibit was noticeable by its almost complete and total absence.

How easy it is to tell what is an RHS Gold Medal exhibit?

ALL the Gold Medal winning exhibits stood out from the rest.  Some of the reasons are:

• Mainly due to the amount of botanical / horticultural content - matched by excellent artistic skills.
• They also often read well as a project on the wall (i.e. never ever lose sight of what your exhibit looks like as a whole).
• It's not uncommon for them to include a lot of leaves which have NOT been painted in a formulaic way using only one or two greens!

The way to develop an eye for an RHS Gold medal winning exhibit is to look at them without knowledge of the medal result - and try and work it out for yourself. 

What I normally like to do when reviewing exhibits at the Preview (in the Lindley Hall) before medals have been announced (in the normal way of things) is to try and second guess which exhibits will get a Gold. My track record is about 90% correct. This time I knew some of the results before I visited the exhibition. Nevertheless I stood in the middle of the two galleries and looked around at the exhibits - without looking at the medal certificates. What proved to be very interesting this year was working out why some very impressive Silver Gilt exhibits had NOT got a Gold Medal.

RHS GOLD MEDAL EXHIBITS

Kimiko Miyahara's exhibit Endemic Plants of Japan's Ogasawara Islands, A Unesco World Heritage Site (below) was simply stunning and very worthy of a Gold Medal and the Best Botanical Art Exhibit.

She has painted six different plants in one location - thus portraying habitat / flora in the traditional botanical sense of some of the greats of the past.  A number of her paintings are  also identified as vulnerable on International Red Lists - so each is a botanical record in the tradition of the best botanical art i.e. creating a record of a plant which is rare or might disappear.

Her paintings are hugely complex and are also positively stuffed full of detail - but still read extremely well - see one example below. They are, for me, the type of painting which you can spend a very long time looking at.

I also really liked her somewhat stylised way of painting. I've no problems whatsoever with style so long as the painting is botanically accurate.

RHS BEST BOTANICAL ART EXHIBIT AND GOLD MEDAL: 'Endemic Plants of Japan's Ogasawara Islands, A Unesco World Heritage Site' by Kimiko Miyahara

Part of RHS Gold Medal Exhibit by Kimiko Miyahara "Clinostigma savoryanum" (Rehd. et Wills) Moore et Fosberg IUCN Red List (Vulnerable) August 2018 Watercolour on paper

When I think back to the 2021 exhibition in years to come, I think the exhibit that I will remember most - and in some detail is Francesca Ross's exhibit Tomatoes: Flower and Fruit Development.

RHS GOLD MEDAL: "Tomatoes: Flower and Fruit Development" by Francesca Ross

It' a unique exhibit - I don't think I've ever seen an exhibit about tomatoes before and certainly not one which approached the topic in this way. It positively bounced off the wall at me and shouted "GOLD!". It's also just one of those exhibits which you keep coming back to. I loved:

• the development of the Tomato in size
• the consistency of treatment within in each painting which lent unity to the exhibit across the six artworks - despite the differing sizes
• the fact each had a profile, a top down view, dissections and a series re. flower development providing a complete botanical picture not just of each exhibit but how tomatoes have developed over time as they migrated and mutations developed.
• the painting of the dissected tomatoes was splendid (see below)
• the painting of the small dissections of the flowers (see below) reminded me very much of Francis Bauer's style and format. It's an excellent one to emulate.

Such a very great pity that

• the text for this exhibit was edited - about which more in the next post and
• two of the paintings have been hung out of order. (Francesca commented on an earlier post) I'm guessing it's the last two as I know the story of the whole exhibit is about mutations caused the tomato to grow over time - which is somewhat lost when they're not in the right order and the overarching theme is not mentioned in the text.

Francesca wrote a very good article about her previous RHS Exhibit and no doubt will do the same again for her excellent tomatoes - and the real story behind the exhibit.

Part of Solanum lycopersicum 'Gigantomo' - one of the six paintings in Francesca Ross's RHS Gold medal winning exhibit of tomatoes

It is possible to repeat a subject and win Gold again. 

​Mariko Aikawa has come back with a second exhibit of her excellent paintings of Tillandsia - after her first Gold Medal and Best Botanical Art Exhibit for the same subject in 2016. The three on the left are BIG paintings. (PS Use the text and medal cards on the left as a scale for comparison of different exhibits!)

RHS GOLD MEDAL: Tillandsia by Mariko Aikawa

Pauline Trim won the RHS Best Artwork Award and a Gold Medal for this painting of Fraxinus excelsior the Common or European Ash Tree. (see below)

BEST BOTANICAL ARTWORK: Fraxinus excelsior the Common or European Ash Tree by Pauline Trim

​This painting is on the left of her exhibit below "Native British Deciduous Trees featuring Galls".

​This was a very comprehensive set of paintings illustrating all the different features of various Native British Trees. If I saw them as a set of plates for a feature article in Curtis's Botanical Magazine I would not be in the least bit surprised. For me, her exhibit represented an excellent standard of conventional botanical illustration in terms of painted artworks. No gimmicks, just solid observation and use of both pencil and watercolour in appropriate ways. 

PS Below is a panoramic pic which has been adjusted to make the pics line up better.

RHS GOLD MEDAL: "Native British Deciduous Trees featuring Galls" by Pauline Trim

GOLD MEDAL: Punica granatum by Toni Dade

One or more paintings from Toni Dade's exhibit of Punica granatum (pomegranate) is, I understand, going to find its way into the Lindley Library and/or the home of a senior RHS bod or both! I gather others who admire her exhibit, like me, really like Painting 5 in particular (see below)! I'm not surprised. 

As a complete exhibit (which you can see much better on her website), it's very effective at showing us the life cycle of the pomegranate during one year. The fact she did not dodge the months when it was winding down as a plant made it a stronger and not weaker exhibit to my mind.

​I was appalled to see that the exhibit was labelled incorrectly on the Botanical Art Awards sheet. Obviously latin spelling of species and the role of upper and lower case was not ingrained in whoever typed up the listing.

The fifth of Tonia Dade's paintings during 2020 of the life cycle of a pomegranate

Bottom line: Many of the Gold Medal winning exhibits have

• LOTS of horticulture and/or botanical plant content;
• design is excellent - the exhibit is well organised and comprises well composed artworks which provide a sense of unity / complete story across the exhibit as a whole;
• media used is consistently technically excellent - across all paintings 
• the artwork often tells a striking story of habitat or life cycle
• there's no significant weakness / omission / lack of any aspect which contributes to a typical gold medal winning exhibit
• ​IMPACT!

I hasten to add that this is what I've also deduced from many exhibitions and inspection of very many RHS gold medal winning exhibits over the last decade or so. The Judges may say something different.
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SILVER GILTS EXHIBITS I liked
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Those exhibits that won Silver Gilts - but looked like they might have been a Gold from a distance, typically fell short on one aspect in my opinion. For example:

• The composition was good BUT the actual painting could have been better in a technical sense.
• The subject was unusual - BUT lacked the substance seen in those getting Golds in terms of content
• The presentation was excellent - BUT each image or the exhibit as a whole lacked that extra content or impact provided by Gold Medal Winners.

This is why it's well worth visiting the exhibition to see the differences between Gold Medal winning exhibits and those being awarded Silver Gilt. My images of exhibits are a very poor substitute for the real thing!

JUDGES SPECIAL AWARD / Silver Gilt: Wild Plants with Berries in my favourite colour by Yasue Sakai

Yasue Sakai (Japan?) received the Judges Special Award for her exhibit "Wild Plants with Berries in my favourite colour". I'm not surprised. It presented extremely well in Gallery 1.

Her favourite colour for berries appears to be blue through indigo. Her exhibit was very striking and it was good to see such large paintings of the form and structure of the plant being painted. I suspect it didn't get Gold as there were aspects of some of the painting, on some of the paintings, which fell short of the technical excellence which I've certainly come to expect of Gold Medal winners. However in a lot of other respects it ticked the boxes - not least for being a large and impactful exhibit.

Similar comments might also be made about Hideko Kamoshita's exhibit of Aeaceae - although I personally prefer to see six equal sized exhibits - as demonstrated by other exhibits

SILVER GILT: Aeaceae by Hideko Kamoshita

Jarnie Godwin's exhibit of Echinacea stood out when I walked into the first room - despite the fact it was way over on the other side of a large gallery.

​The skill in drawing and painting the plant was excellent - and I always look at the stems and leaves when making that assessment. Bottom line, it looked good. However, once I realised that the subsidiary stem in each painting was telling the story of the life cycle of the plant I was more impressed.

​I think it might have missed out on a Gold by being a 'regular' plant with a very simple presentation and/or not enough leaves an/or flowers.

SILVER GILT: Three of the six paintings by Jarnie Godwin for 'Echinacea: Life through Colour'

I tend to advise people who want to win Gold to

• try and think of something which has not been done before. 
• find out what are the plants which have got an RHS Award of Garden Merit and grow and paint those if if you are doing a popular garden plant
• paint more leaves!

​You can read more about what has been done before on my page about Exhibit Titles at RHS Botanical Art Shows - which now needs updating!

Below Silver Gilt I don't tend to comment on individuals so much as what can be learned from their artwork awarded Silver and below.....

SILVER MEDALS
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The lessons to learn from the exhibits awarded Silver are - I suspect (but don't know) - are as follows:

• Do NOT portray just one part of a plant in individual artworks. It's simply not enough. This tendency tends to be something one sees a lot of at ordinary botanical art shows. However this is the RHS Botanical Art Show - and I'm absolutely sure Judges are looking for more content. I've seen this happen to other people in other RHS Botanical Art Shows. So you artwork can be technically competent in terms of handling of media and your exhibit might be well presented and attractive but if the content looks lightweight, you maybe should NOT expect to get more than a silver. 
• If mixing two media on one support, make sure that you can do the following:
  • create unity across the exhibit as a whole by treating the distribution of coloured and monochrome media in a consistent way in terms of composition and distribution on the support (for example see Pauline Trim's exhibit to see how this can be done)
  • deliver excellence in both media - otherwise Judges seem to have a tendency I've noticed) to judge you according to the weakest media.

If you've been awarded a Silver Medal at any time and want to improve the colour of your medal next time you exhibit, you cannot do better than to look at what Gold Medallists do - and do better.

BRONZE MEDALS
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I personally find RHS bronze medals in this exhibition to be very puzzling. In principle, all those exhibiting at an RHS Show are those who have done enough in their portfolio submission to pursuade that they're very capable of producing an exhibit which would be awarded a bronze medal.

​I was therefore very pleased to see that there were none this year. 

Exhibits which did NOT impress me
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I confess my jaw dropped when I read the narrative accompanying the exhibit which received "no award". I'm in no way surprised it received no award. What I was surprised about was that this very weak exhibit was hung at all.

To my mind it very evidently fell a very long way short of the time and effort an artist SHOULD put into an international exhibition at what is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious botanical art shows in the world.

This and some other exhibits in the past now make me think the Picture Panel might like to ponder on whether a different approach is required in order to maintain the prestigious nature of the exhibition. 

I outline what the issues are and some possible solutions in my review of the show as whole in the context of its venue this year - in my final post.