In times of hardship priorities are made on our behalf – public funding awarded, maintained, cut or even removed completely.

I recently found myself in the alleyway at the Royal Academy of Arts; it runs parallel to Burlington Arcade and is traditionally used for deliveries to that part of the building known as the West Yard.  I was there to hand in a painting of mine for this year’s Summer Exhibition; it had been pre selected following a jpeg submission. An enthusiastic young man approached me, he was an interviewer for the film crew which makes the television programme (part documentary part advertising) about the show which for a number of years has been aired by the BBC around the time of the exhibition’s opening.

Damien Hirst’s exhibition of the Jeff Koons pieces in his personal collection has recently opened at his Newport Street Gallery in South London, both artists are at the very pinnacle of their profession – both are written about and discussed relentlessly it seems.