Kaleidoscopic vision

The Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy of Arts, until 22 August

The Weston Room is packed with prints as usual, but also features five display cases of artists’ books, including work by such masters of the genre as Ron King, Ken Campbell and Ian Tyson. Among the prints I particularly liked Bronwen Sleigh’s hand-coloured etching, Terry New’s digital print, Cornelia Parker’s etched worry lines, the screenprints of Stephen Chambers, Eileen Cooper’s linocuts, Ivor Abrahams’s ‘Suburban Totem’ and etchings by Paula Rego, Frank Auerbach, John Carter, Peter Freeth and Eileen Hogan (a pale beauty of Bryanston Square). The Small Weston Room is a typical feast of tiny paintings, and supremely popular with the buying public. Here are such old favourites as Diana Armfield and Bernard Dunstan, both 90 this year and still going strong, and a trio of Elizabeth Blackadder still-lifes. Several larger paintings, such as Derek Balmer’s autumn birchwood and Mick Rooney’s bewitched food-oriented tableaux, help to make sense of this room.