A week before the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition opened to the public it was Non-Member’s Varnishing Day — set aside since 1809 for exhibiting artists to retouch their work, apply a coat of varnish on to not-long-painted canvases. This was the day when one-upmanship supremo Turner used to send in unfinished works, only to transform them in front of stunned peers. Nowadays it’s more of a party, a celebration of artists, inspiration and the previous year’s work. It follows an historic annual procession of RAs and artists led by a steel band that stops the traffic along Piccadilly from the RA courtyard to St James’s Church and a Service for Artists. Back at the Academy, the exhibitors enter the galleries to see their work hanging in these famous rooms for the first time.

There may be no varnishing these days, but the artists can check, I suppose, that a work’s not been hung upside down or anything. You may remember the plinth of a few years ago, without its intended head I was lucky enough to be there this year, courtesy of the RA and the Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly. I went in search of the 11 Oxfordshire artists exhibiting. No mean task, to find them amid 1,267 artworks, the number whittled down from more than 11,000 entries by the Selection Committee. In its 242nd year, this remains the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition.

I found Peter Lawrence, from Oxford, first. He was in the Large Weston Room. His wood engraving, The Gallery, Level 2: Abstraction, was in the top row of one of the bays. The work is so minute and detailed it deserves closer viewing, but it worked well as an abstract too. Peter pointed out the number 2 and next to it a lift door, and the five mini-pictures of his taking up a whole gallery wall of their own within the design.

This is the fourth time Peter has shown at the Summer Exhibition, and the second year running both he and his son John, a final year student at the RA schools, have been selected.

Two rows down was a giraffe Bending Down to Drink. This was Chipping Norton artist Diana Howorth’s etching and aquatint showing the graceful creature stretching its legs out sideways in a scene suffused with a heat-hazy sandy light. Diana said she has twice submitted and twice been accepted (last year’s was a bumblebee).

In the same room — also here for the second time — was Oxford-born artist Josephine Sumner showing a woodcut print of a Mandrill, one of her first woodcuts, printed on to Japanese paper; and two artists from Henley-on-Thames: Hen Coleman showing St Lucy’s Day #1, a deceptively simple combination of etching and screenprint, and Jenni Desmond with What? — an amusing etching of a cat caught in the act, dead mouse at its feet, the cat looking up at us, eyes pleading innocence.

Among the works in the Small Weston Room, always crammed with small works, more than 200 in this instance, were Milton-under-Wychwood’s Clare Astor’s collage and oil crayon of A Secret Place, and Abingdon artist Duncan McQueen’s oil portrait of a bearded Jack. In later galleries I found Oxford artist Paul Amey’s cast aluminium Winter Lake, and two by Ros Rixon from Blewbury, sculptures that literally deconstruct the printed word, using paper and text from 1911 and 1931 art books. There is also a plaster work in the Lecture Room by Nicholas Jones, of Bicester.

I met Sai Hua Kuan, originally from Singapore now living in Oxford, in Gallery X, a room that tends to exhibit unusual works. His was no exception. A short video work, lasting only one minute, two seconds, Space Drawing No. 5 was an exciting piece, the better for a bit of explanation.

Hua Kuan, a sculptor by training, told me how the idea came about. He had been drawing, grew bored with it, and by chance had materials around him for a sculptural piece.

Playing with the pieces, a bungee accidentally snapped and hit him. He began to think about tension, possibilities, about “drawing in space” with the human element removed. I loved what he’d done. You have to be patient, waiting for the other videos in the loop (far less appealing) to pass, then be quick, don the headphones and watch.

The headphones are a must: the sounds — the twang, zing, zap as the 400 metre-long bungee races through the empty building, snaps round walls and floors, pulls up pins, knocks things over — make it miles more exciting.

It’s over in a trice, but was filmed more than 100 times, shot at different angles in the ten or so rooms of an old barrack in Russia.

By now, as ever at the RA’s enjoyable Liquorice Allsorts of a show, I was running out of time, so had a quick look at some other works by Gillian Ayres, Tracey Emin, Michael Craig-Martin, Grayson Perry, Barbara Rae, and other big names.

And upstairs, at the memorial display in the John Madejski Fine Rooms of artists who died in the past year, such as Craigie Aitchison RA, Donald Hamilton Fraser RA, and outside in the courtyard, completely unmissable, Barry Flanagan RA’s giant bronze Leaping Hares. The exhibition is open until August 22. Most works are for sale. The newly refurbished Athenaeum Hotel, just up from the RA along Piccadilly, with apartments and rooms with Juliet balconies overlooking Green Park, a Vertical Garden rising up all ten floors, offers Arts & Culture weekend packages that make a dream of going to London events like the Summer Exhibition. Tickets are available daily at the RA. Advance bookings: Telephone 0844 209 1919 or visit www.royalacademy.org.uk.