Exhibition of the week Summer Exhibition 2018

Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8090, www.royalacademy.org.uk). Until 19 August

In the years after its inception in 1769, the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition became an exciting forum in which the likes of Turner, Constable and Stubbs “competed for attention”. But it soon ceased to be a “cultural force”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, and in the past few decades it has been nothing more than a stuffy event in which workmanlike contributions from established artists traditionally hang side-by-side with “so-so” efforts submitted by the general public. It is a formula that has generally proved dull and predictable.

This year, however, things are different. To mark the Royal Academy’s 250th anniversary, Grayson Perry has been invited to co-curate the show, and he has turned the RA “inside out and upside down”, making little distinction between “throwaway rubbish” and great art. It has made for a wilfully anarchic display, one that “obliterates definitions” of artistic worth, giving bizarre exhibits like a fibreglass sculpture of the Pink Panther, or a “deadly serious and adoring” portrait of Nigel Farage, equal footing with work by David Hockney and Paula Rego. It is “the most liberating exhibition of new art I’ve seen for ages”. It’s clear from the outset that Perry is breaking with tradition, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. The first room of the exhibition usually contains work by its “biggest and most credible artists”. Here, by contrast, we are confronted with a “hideous” cloth sculpture by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, and an array of “quirky” paintings, many by amateur artists. The walls of the second gallery are painted a “screaming yellow” and packed with a “wildly incongruous riot of works”, from some “meticulous” garden views and portraits to a likeness of Jeremy Corbyn presented as a “seaside postcard pastiche”. It’s all good fun, but as ever there is far too much to digest. And it has to be said that the general spirit of wackiness can become slightly trying.

But the good news, said Rachel Campbell-johnston in The Times, is that the “usual vast acreages of mandatory but dull inclusions” are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we get highlights such as a video art room showcasing work by Bill Viola and the great American experimentalist Bruce Nauman, and a “particularly striking” architectural display featuring models of the renovated Westminster Abbey tower, and some “Martian-style dwellings”. There are some disappointments – Perry himself is barely represented – but on the whole, this year’s summer show is an “enthusiastically democratic spectacle that breathes a gust of new life into long-standing tradition”.

Peter Tatchell, who has been championing LGBT and human rights causes for more than 50 years, picks his favourite books. He is director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation: www.petertatchellfoundation.org

Animal Liberation

by Peter Singer, 1975 (Bodley Head £17.99). One of the most important books of the past 100 years. It expands our moral horizons beyond our own species – a major evolution in ethics. Singer popularised the term speciesism to describe human oppression of other animal species. He showed that animal rights and human rights have the same goal: to end suffering.

Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love

by Sheila Rowbotham, 2008 (Verso £32.99). A biography of Edward Carpenter, the prophetic gay English poet and philosopher. Decades ahead of his time, he advocated green

socialism, women’s suffrage, pollution controls, recycling, sex education, prison reform, workers’ control, vegetarianism and gay liberation.

Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America

by Bruce Perry, 1991 (out of print). Malcolm X’s ideas of black consciousness, self-reliance and community empowerment have a universal relevance. The book’s revelation of his youthful bisexuality created a furore.

The Last English Revolutionary

by Hugh Purcell, 2004 (Sussex Academic Press £22.50). Tom Wintringham was Britain’s most popular

democratic communist, whose call for guerrilla tactics against Nazism was adopted by Churchill. He was erased from history by the communists because he opposed their Stalinist party line, and by the establishment, who feared he’d give communism mass appeal.

Outrage! An Oral History

by Ian Lucas, 1998 (out of print). The story of one of the most successful non-violent direct-action groups in UK history and how, from 199096, it challenged anti-lgbt institutions: outing homophobes and hypocrites; forcing policy changes by the police, schools, military, business, church, media; changing attitudes towards LGBT people.