A landmark year at the RHA

VISUAL ARTS: There is a celebratory air to this year's RHA Annual Exhibition, a feeling that the event marks something of a decisive consolidation of what can plausibly be described as the Academy's gradual transformation since it moved into 15 Ely Place.

That was in the mid-1980s. By then, the old symbolic polarity in Irish art between the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and the RHA had been rendered largely irrelevant by the emerging heterogeneity of art practice. There was a dawning realisation in at least sections. Rather than viewing itself as the unyielding guardian of timeless verities, it had to enter the fray, knowing that the outcome would not be predictable. The catalyst for this had been the need to complete Raymond McGrath's building on Ely Place. Now the organisation really is at a stage where its new secretary, painter James Hanley, can say that "both the annual exhibition and the Academy are evolving entities reflecting the art of their time". The mere presence of Hanley himself in the Academy would probably have been unthinkable back in the early 1980s.

This year's show is full of signs that the process of evolution is being energetically encouraged. One is the breaking of the membership log-jam. The problem here is that the membership is limited by charter. Existing members had to resign or die before places became available. As the current president, Dr Arthur Gibney (who shows fine architectural watercolours in the show) explains, the Academy, after prolonged debate, took a leaf from the book of its British counterpart and "instituted a new category of senior membership". Twelve members became senior members, including such stalwarts as Barbara Warren, Thomas Ryan, John Coyle and Patrick Pye, opening up the membership to others.

The British Royal Academy model is important in other ways as well, not least as the inspiration for the idea of the summer show, rather than, as hitherto, the early spring show. And there is also the question of the broadly-based selection. While the annual is a members plus open submission affair, it has been augmented by invitation, this year as in recent years.

This year, entrance is free (there is a sponsor, Siemens) and there is a new-style, larger-format catalogue, also available in CD-Rom form. Significantly, it features a selection of essays, immediately providing an air of communality and debate which is essential for the vitality of the Academy. It includes, as well, fine obituaries of academicians who died during the last year, among them Brigid Ganly and Tom Nisbet.

As ever, the annual show is very big, running to some 448 individual pieces, taking up every available gallery at Ely Place, including the small Ashford Gallery. But it is an enjoyable experience, and never feels unduly crowded. In particular, there is a certain lightness that comes from the sheer variety of the work. Not that the usual academic suspects are absent. They are present and correct. After all, it wouldn't really be the RHA annual without Thomas Ryan, Desmond Carrick's colourful Neo-Impressionist landscapes, John Coyle's solidly crafted interiors and exteriors, and Barbara Warren's thoughtful, unshowy compositions, including an excellent, restrained landscape, Tully Mountain Streams, with a strong sense of structure and design to it.

As with Hanley, the inclusion of artists like Martin Gale and Michael O'Dea, both full members, was important for the development of the Academy, in that it demonstrated that traditional media and subjects were open to re-invention and were entirely relevant in a contemporary context. Gale's hard, unflinching views of rural Ireland, strongly represented here, are a useful corrective to the romanticising tendency of landscape painting. But that is not to say that a more romantic view of landscape is inadmissible.

As ever, there is a wealth of landscape painting included. As ever, it is of variable quality, but there is much that is very good by any standard, including Cherry Turpin's beautifully subdued Fields at Dusk, Brian Vahey's meticulously observed, carefully constructed, expansive mountain landscape, Nancy Wynne-Jones's evocative, painterly studies, Sonia Shiel's textural, almost abstract composition, T. P. Flanagan's unfailingly expert watercolours of watery places, Veronica Bolay's radiant, mystically charged spaces and Peter Collis's bold, strongly stated works, as well as Stephen McKenna's exacting, almost severe view of the River Barrow. There is quite a range of approaches contained in all that.

Add to this David Crone, Anita Shelbourne's subtly tonal pictures (some of them incorporating figures), Michael Canning's brooding Cloud, Jim Savage's graphite drawing and Simon McWilliams's bravura account of a building under construction, and you have a very strong show within a show.

Portraiture is another academic staple. Among the highlights are Hanley's explorations of masculinity, Paul Funge's informal study of Anthony Clare, Nick Miller's forceful portrayal of writer John McGahern, Daisy Richardson's dreamy self-portrait, Michael O'Dea's characterful Jack L and Brian Bourke's vigorously made head studies.

While the Academy has changed, there is a sense of continuity as well, not just in the presence of the old guard, but also in the commitment to traditional media.

There is a great deal of good painting and sculpture on view that would not immediately be described as academic. Among the painters in this category are, apart from some mentioned already, Sinead Aldridge, Ronnie Hughes, John Cronin, William Crozier, Makiko Nakamura, Gillian Lawlor and Barbara Rae, to name by no means all.

The sculpture is also strong, from the abstraction of Eileen MacDonagh's assured stone carvings to Olivia Musgrave's beautifully poised Standing Figure and delicate - not in the sense of timid - slate carvings by Tom Fitzgerald.

Photography is a relative newcomer, but, hearteningly, there is a very strong photographic section, that is very much art photography rather than photography per se. In the academic context, we might expect Fergus Bourke's flawless, rich-toned landscapes, but we also get Ruth McHugh's beautifully textured suite of pale, painterly images, with their remarkable play on texture, a group of images from Anne Marie Curran, Veronica Nicholson's terrific Nature Morte - Road Kills and Kate Byrne's intense Arnolfini Wife images.

All of which is, by no means, to exhaust the highlights of what must rank as a landmark RHA annual.

Royal Hibernian Academy, 172nd Annual Exhibition, RHA, 15 Ely Place, Dublin until June 29th (01-6612558)