The RHA comes back to life

LAST year the RHA exhibition had the feeling of an ageing, dusty waxworks; this year, it has come back to life. A new format catalogue, neat and relatively uncluttered hanging, and above all, a presentable level of talent in general, make this year's show (the 166th, incidentally) a heartening rather than a depressing experience. It may not bristle with genius, but there is an overall sense of solidity and professionalism, and even an occasional breath of novelty.

A number of invited artists give much needed variety, particular the distinguished Scottish contingent which includes Barbara Rae and Elizabeth Blackadder, both of them excellent painters. Three deceased members are commemorated - with the usual mini exhibition: Alexandra Wejcbert, John F. Kelly and Arthur Armstrong. Kelly was a respected academician of the old, school, competent in portraiture and life particularly; Armstrong was probably the last figure of the old, and much missed, Campbell Ditton nexus, who like them found most of his typical subject matter in the West of Ireland landscape.

Alexandra Wejchert, by contrast, was directly in the line of Mitteleuropa abstraction and Constructivism, a master of form without being a formalist. She was, in my opinion, a major sculptor, though her talent bloomed relatively late; and the well chosen examples of her work show how she combined Modernist austerity with Baroque sinuosity and a special quality of aspiration, expressed in her flamelike, upward writhing shapes.

The inclusion of Stephen McKenna (a commanding canvas of a lighthouse) and of Michael Warren, who exhibits an imposing and well placed sculpture called Trade Winds consisting of three erect wooden capes on a metal base, was a well judged move, since both are artists who carry genuine weight and prestige. There are two heads by Louis Le Brocquy, of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney respectively (two Nobel Prizewinners!) and a large, exotically colourful, Tony O'Mally painting.

Otherwise, some of the best and most satisfying painting - comes from John Shinnors, Hilda van Stockum (who still rules the field in still life), Nancy Wynne Jones, Cherith McKinstry, Mary Lohan, Martin Gate (two ultra delicate watercolours), John Kelly, Michael O'Dea's large pictures, somewhere between Expressionism and cartoon art, flirt with vulgarity but are always lively and very much his own.

I also, for the record, noted down the names of Michael Ashur, Rosaleen Davey, Sheila Pomeroy, Veronica Bolay, Tony Carroll, Marie Carroll (a kind of cross stylistically between naive painting and early Jack Yeats), Liam Breandan De Frinse, Melita Denaro, Ann Donnelly, Denise Ferran, Terence Gayer, Tim Goulding, James Hanley, Mary Rose Binchy, Donald Teskey, Raymond Mintz, Joseph O Connor, Eamon O'Kane, Charles Brady, and Tim Goulding. Among the graphic art, Terence Gravett's disciplined professionalism is noticeable and the intricate pencil landscape by James Savage is something of a curio.

The portraits this year are rather stilted on the whole (nothing new, of course, about that!) and personally I could pick out no work that was outstanding in this area Carey Clarke is as academically efficient always, but somehow official portraiture has an inhibiting effect, both on the viewer and so it seems - on the artist. This is true both of the painted portraits and the sculpted ones, though Eamonn O'Doherty's bronze maquette for a James Connolly monument has old fashioned virtues which I did not associate with him. A possible exception to the general rigor mortis is Brian Kreydatus's odd self portrait, done in thick paint faintly reminiscent of early John Bratby.

The sculpture itself is strengthened by several new arrivals, including Maighread Tobin whose state pieces are direct and original. Michael Duhan's vocabulary is a stock one, but he uses it to unorthodox ends, and he has a very happy, slightly anarchist vein of sexual humour. Tom Fitzgerald's mildly avant garde style is an antidote to the stuffier conventional pieces, and I enjoyed the wit of Gemma Guihan's A Terrible Beauty is Born and the broader humour of Maureen Bushe's sandstone Birdbath.

As usual, much or most of the weight and solidity in this section comes from the more established figures: Melanie le Brocquy, Imogen Stuart, John Behan, Edward Delaney, John Coen. Vivienne Roche shows one of her characteristic metal "hanging" pieces, and Brian King's single bronze is one of the few convincing abstract works on view, in any medium. But there are also sculptures in various media by Eddie O'Neill, Michael Quane (in particular), Pat Ryan, Michael Verdon, which stand out of the usual rut and have that essential quirk of personality. I do not quite know in what category to put Maura Whelan's Sea Dancer in glass or Isabelle Peyrat's delicate Violette et Tristan, but they do add something different.