The summer exhibition is open to all members and fellows of the Royal Society of Sculptors, working in any medium. The work will be exhibited in the gallery spaces (not outside on the sculpture terrace) of Dora House from 22 July- 21 September 2024. The Summer Show will be selected and curated by David McAlmont. The private view will be Saturday 20 July 2024.

The theme for the show is Reality Check.

“Alternative facts are not facts: they’re falsehoods.”

Thus spoke, Chuck Todd, MSNBC’s Meet the Press anchor, on January 22nd 2017 when Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway challenged his live interrogation. The exchange made international headlines just months after the Oxford English Dictionary declared on November 16th Post-Truth the Word of 2016. Earlier that month, Independent columnist Matthew Norman wrote, “The truth has become so devalued that what was once the gold standard of political debate is now worthless currency.” 

That was the year of an infamous British referendum and notorious US presidential candidacy. The 2016 lexicographers then explained how both events accelerated dual post-truth discourses. The thing is the term did not appear magically in 2016. In 2004, author Ralph Keyes dedicated an entire book to the idea, The Post Truth Era, and the concept stretches even farther back to 1992 when an Academy Award winning, Serbian American playwright, Steve Tesich animated his take on the Iran Contra scandal and the Gulf War thus, “We, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world.”

Are we still in that post-truth dispensation? Is artificial intelligence its most recent horseman of the apocalypse? AI is certainly portended like an advent of Armageddon, even though it has been with us since we first logged on. In 2024, Instagram influencers who look like people don’t have to be people, deep fake photos of a bigoted presidential candidate in the company of grinning African American supporters circulate, or an edited portrait of a renowned conservative family is jettisoned from respectable news sites. We can be excused for asking, “What is real anymore?” Perhaps, then, it is really time for a reality check. DM

CURATOR

David McAlmont is a recording artiste, art historian and tutor at the Architectural Association Interprofessional studio. He is a Birkbeck and Middlesex University alumnus (History of Western Art and Architecture, and Performing Arts), author of the 'Permissible Beauty' film. Recent works include the album 'Happy Ending (A Guardian Album of the Year), and an article on the history of the word "Ghetto" for Mousse magazine, Shifting Visions and the Medici Society (January 2024). He is currently developing a Jacques Louis David project for 2025.

NOTES 

- Artists will need to arrange for their artwork to be dropped off at Dora House on Wednesday 17 July.

- Artists will need to arrange to collect their work on Tuesday 24 September.

- If work is being sent from abroad package labelling must be marked as 'Temporary import for exhibition' to avoid additional fees.

- Artists will need to supply their own plinths.

- The curatorial decision is final.

- Installation instructions must be provided in advance, the instructions can be submitted via video.

- If appropriate works must be PAT tested, proof of testing will be required. If a work is not fully functioning on the day of installation it cannot be included in the show and may be removed.

- Artists will not be present for installation, experienced technicians will install work.

ENTRY PROCESS

Entry is via this online application form only. Entry fee is £5 per work. You may enter up to five works as separate submissions to be considered for exhibition within the Society’s gallery spaces (not the sculpture terrace).

The closing deadline for online submission is 5pm, Monday 20 May 2024.

Notification of all results will be sent by email W/C 10 June, at the latest.

After submitting your first artwork, you will then be directed to make a payment. Select the amount for the number of submissions you would like to make. If this is more than one, you will then be able to make further submissions by submitting additional forms up to the number of artworks you have paid for. 

ENTRY FEE

Entry fee is £5 per work. You may enter up to five works.