'A garden of strange and exotic passions'

A man, or rather, a life-sized mannequin dressed in multi-coloured African prints just about manages to balance a tall pile of fancy cakes on his back. He’s bent double with the effort. The comical yet commanding Cake Man (II) is artist Yinka Shonibare’s response to all the talk of bankers and bonuses, the top percent getting all the cake, and how decadence relies on the efforts of others.

Shonibare’s talking point of a sculpture stands in the centre of an inspiring opening room at the RA’s Summer Exhibition. This year all the works in the gilded Wohl Central Hall — the entry point for visitors to this annual bonanza of art, the world’s largest open entry exhibition — are by new Royal Academicians, marking the fact that a record number of members were elected the past year.

Individually and collectively these artworks make hot topics for conversation. They include: Conrad Shawcross’s Paradigm, a tall steel sculpture worked with mathematical precision by the youngest living RA, whose work has been compared to Heath Robinson’s; a model of Thomas Heatherwick’s stylish Garden Bridge proposal for the River Thames in London; Bob and Roberta Smith’s transcription of Eddie Mair’s moving radio interview with the surgeon David Nott about his experiences in Syria written large on to a board the height of the ceiling; and enigmatic paintings such as Chantal Joffe’s portrait of a young woman in Red Cape whose measured gaze asks questions of the viewer.

James Turell's 'Sensing Thought'

It’s a great start to a show that Hughie O’Donoghue, the leader of this year’s hanging committee in his catalogue introduction calls “a wild garden of strange and exotic passions”. It’s a great description for a show known for its diversity, its plethora of wild, often strange, often whimsical, and certainly colourful artworks. There are more than 1,200 to see this year, whittled down from around 12,000 entries (for the first time submitted digitally for the initial judging), arranged in themed rooms curated by RAs. As usual, most artworks are for sale, from high profile as well as up-and-coming artists.

The first work from an Oxfordshire artist showing this year is in Gallery II, the printmaking room. Flora McLachlan, who studied art at Brighton College and English Literature at Brasnose College, Oxford, offers an etching that’s appropriately titled Midsummer. The typically enchanting print from the Oxford artist shows a stag caught mid-step in the glow of moonlight in a forest glade. Branches cast linear shadows, oak leaves and remaining honeysuckle blooms twirl their way towards the light, and a doe quietly crops the grass in the foreground of this atmospheric finely detailed work.

Chantal Joffe, Red Cape

The Small Weston Room is as usual stuffed to the hilt with smaller works. Two Oxfordshire artists have works here. In one corner, luckily hung at eye level, you will find James Read’s The Bullfinch, an acrylic and collage on board — using acrylic paint and various fragments of paper, from newsprint to drawings and so on. It’s a complex work that begs questions. Is the bird pinned to the board? Is it pinned to its destiny? We can’t know, but the picture seems to invoke a bird besieged by the natural and unnatural around it. Read, from Cowley, initially studied at Winchester School of Art, had a printmaking placement at Oxford Brookes University, and has shown widely in Oxford, including at a 2012 group exhibition at the Ultimate Picture Palace.

Beside the door is Palimpsest by Robbie Wraith, from Holton. Well known for his impressive portrait commissions (exhibited last autumn at Burford’s Brian Sinfield Gallery), here Wraith shows a watercolour that hints at that facility. In the painting Wraith places a strangely menacing mannequin (a recurrent studio prop of his) in front of a pin-board covered in famous portraits, old and new. It is fun spotting Vermeer, Titian and the like, and absorbing to ponder the connections in this fascinating painting. To be able to top and tail this review with a mannequin is a surprise, but then that’s it about this show: anything goes. Though there are constants, it’s never the same, always enjoyable, always full of surprises.

If you have enjoyed seeing Sean Scully’s current exhibition at Christ Church, Oxford, then look out for him at the RA, where his large meditative oil painting Doric Night was shortlisted for the Charles Wollaston Award, the prize for the most distinguished work.

RA Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy, London
Until August 17