The Royal Academy of Arts presents the first major solo survey in the UK of the work of internationally acclaimed artist, Michael Craig-Martin (b. 1941). In a career that spans over six decades, Craig-Martin propels conceptual art from its experimental beginnings to the mainstream. The exhibition, arranged in close collaboration with the artist, provides an overview of his extraordinary practice with drawings, sculptures, paintings and installations. It also features a fully immersive video experience, a first in Craig-Martin’s career.

The exhibition design prioritised colour sequences and enfilades to chronologically display his early conceptual works in white-walled rooms – including Craig-Martin’s pioneering conceptual work “An Oak Tree” where a glass of water on a shelf is accompanied by a text in which he declares that he has transformed the object into a tree – through to his large-scale, vivid colour paintings of everyday objects – from corkscrews and umbrellas to laptops and smartphones – to his new work created especially for this exhibition, Cosmos,  the artist’s first 360-degree digital installation. His bold coloured paintings of everyday objects fill the main galleries with colour and push us to question the mundanities of everyday objects.

In a dramatic site-specific installation, the doorways in the Central Hall were transformed into over-sized objects such as a watch, an iPhone and a glass of water.