Artist Rebecca Salter: ‘I’m quite happy with disruption’

When the artist Rebecca Salter greets me at the entrance to her studio in a former industrial building in north London, the first thing that strikes me is her workwear: not a billowing smock or jumper and jeans that have seen better days but a trim white lab coat, with thin stripes of grey paint over the lower half. She looks, in a way, like one of her paintings, precise pale fields of flecks and dabs in shades from the white-black spectrum.

Not that she has too much time for painting these days. As president of the Royal Academy of Arts (the first woman in the role), she spends most of her time leading the 256-year-old institution, whose governing body is composed of artists and architects known as Royal Academicians. (The RA does not just put on exhibitions but is also home to an art school, which Salter previously ran as “keeper”.) Nevertheless, this autumn she will be having her first solo commercial show in eight years, at Huxley-Parlour gallery in London.

“I made a decision,” she says once we are settled into her studio’s sunlight with some tea, “that I would completely forget about the fact that I don’t have much time in the studio and if I just do two big paintings a year, that would be fine . . . I do a bit more than that but I really didn’t want to end up with a load of postage stamps at the end of it.”

Certainly none of the works on the walls, meant for her show, suggest that she is thinking small; they are ambitious, enterprising paintings involving techniques, such as folding in half, and materials, like heavy-duty ink-nuggets for Japanese calligraphy, newer to Salter’s practice. “AM14” (her works all bear these technical labels) looks like a cloud passing over a fine white mesh, or static playing across a grey screen, while “JF05” has the ambiguous qualities of a Rorschach test, painting as mirror for both artist and viewer. (Prices range from around £5,000 to £45,000.)

Despite the works’ calm surfaces, “there’s a huge amount of serendipity because I like just sometimes pouring water all over and seeing what happens. I’m quite happy with that level of disruption,” she says brightly.

The Japanese ink is not just a method for Salter but an active memory. In 1979-81, she was a research student at Kyoto City University of Arts, and then she lived in Japan for four years afterwards. While she had intended to study ceramics at first, the studios proved uncomfortably conservative (“I arrived and discovered that it was the duty of the women to make the tea”) and she switched to “painting”. The inverted commas are hers, gestured as she speaks, because she sees her work differently: “I think they’re more objects, really, because the back of them and the side of them are very important.” Fibrous Japanese paper allows thin paint applied on both sides to soak through, giving her work several layers and only one at the same time.

This depth/no-depth paradox was influenced by Salter’s study of Japanese aesthetics and architecture, where the play of surfaces and space can be ambiguous and compels you to question your perceptions of the world. “The biggest shock was when I came back and for a long time, maybe even now, I found going to the National Gallery and seeing oil painting really difficult . . . You come back here and you look at a western painting with the varnish on it and it feels very — excluding.” Instead, it is the “softness and ambiguity” of Japanese surfaces which appeal.

As trains occasionally whip along the tracks outside her studio window, we turn to the tricky business of leading a British arts institution in the post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-inflation world. The RA does not receive any government money, so cuts to public funding have not affected it; instead it is reliant on corporate sponsorship and its Friends scheme.

The latter skews heavily elder, so “one of the most important pieces of work is how we change the demographics of that.” It has required some rejigging: “You used to be considered a Young Friend up to the age of 25, but nowadays if you’re 25 . . . you can probably barely afford to rent a room in London, let alone be a Friend. So now you’re young until 35 at the Royal Academy.”

It means rethinking the exhibition programme too. “Before you just knew if you put ‘Impressionists’ over the door, it was as simple as that, and it’s not that simple any more.” Shows such as Entangled Pasts, on art and colonialism, have helped to diversify those coming through the door.

The Brexit factor has been an especial challenge: the RA Schools, where tuition is free for all three years, can now only take British citizens and those with right to remain, settled status or special talent visas. “When I was first elected keeper [in 2017], we looked at Brexit and thought, ‘This is going to be a disaster, we’re going to turn into a little English art school’ . . . And the worst has happened: we can only take students from this country.”

For the first time in our conversation, Salter fizzes a little with annoyance. “Of the 30 founding Academicians, at least a third if not more were from Germany, France, Switzerland. At the very beginning we were international and we’re really miffed, frankly. We have to try our hardest to keep that international mix.” It is certainly true in its programme — shows about Ukrainian and Brazilian Modernism are upcoming — and in the president’s practice, where Japan is never far from the surface.

Rebecca Salter’s show at Huxley-Parlour, London, runs September 19-October 26, huxleyparlour.com