Jock McFadyen RA: Tourist Without A Guidebook – Royal Academy, London

A review of Jock McFadyen: Tourist Without A Guidebook at the Royal Academy in London. A mostly unpeopled London illuminates, like lockdown, the beauty and banality of our urban spaces.

Jock McFadyen, RA

Jock McFadyen was born in Scotland in 1950, moving to England aged 15 in 1966. He has a plethora of shows behind him since his first at Acme Gallery in 1978, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 2012. This latest exhibition, Tourist Without a Guidebook, has suffered from Covid-related delays. It was also my first opportunity to see McFadyen’s work up close.

In Tourist Without a Guidebook, London is the subject on display. Large-scale landscapes, painted over the last 30 years, elevate unremarkable locations. We are the tourists without a guidebook, on a pilgrimage to see a petrol station forecourt, Canary Wharf over scrubland, a graffitied wall. Interestingly for an exhibition that was planned before Covid, the derelict and unpeopled landscapes are reminiscent of the harshest phases of lockdown, the city transformed by taking away the humans but leaving all the signs of their existence.

Tourist Without A Guidebook

For me, it was these urban paintings and cityscapes that were the most exciting. There are also a handful of works with people, but I didn’t connect as much with the style or the subject matter. Maybe it’s that pre-pandemic I enjoyed visiting cities to notice and photograph the unnoticed, the poetic in the overlooked. I don’t think I’m alone in seeking out personal connections when in an exhibition or getting to know a new artist. Or maybe it’s the very still, calm style of the works which I enjoyed.

Jock McFadyen: Tourist Without a Guidebook is a free exhibition, and is an interesting counterpoint if you are seeing, for example Francis Bacon: Man and Beast. Both artists have something to say about society, both treat their paint and canvas masterfully. But there are certainly points of divergence there as well to keep it interesting. Well worth a look either on its own or as part of a day out at Burlington House.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Jock McFadyen: Tourist Without a Guidebook on until 10 April 2022.