Art reviews: RSA Open Exhibition | Raqib Shaw: Reinventing the Old Masters

This year’s RSA Open Exhibition has more than 350 works, selected from a submission of more than 2,000. They are all hung in the low, downstairs galleries of the RSA building. The 350 works are of course all small. That is the defined criterion of the Open. With so much in such small spaces, it is quite an achievement to make the whole experience seem uncluttered, but somehow the RSA have managed it. The ceilings are too low for pictures to be “skied” as was often the complaint of exhibitors in the floor to ceiling hang of the old days in the tall upstairs galleries. (This is indeed the case in the Royal Academy in London, where this year under Grayson Perry’s direction works are hung so high that you cannot possibly see them, nor indeed read the numbers that should identify them.) Some may complain here, however, that, conversely, they are “floored” – hung so low that you really have to sit on the floor to see them properly. But these are cavils. Overall, the show looks very good.