Gallery VIII

Rose Wylie, 'Green Bat' Photo: John Bodkin/DawkinsColour Arranged by David Remfry, this is a Salon room divided between pieces by RAs and a large number of sent-in works. It contains some of the most provocative images in this year’s show. Take Derek Boshier’s painting of The Dinner Party,where the guests include a woman with a goldfish-bowl face and a man with a horse’s head. Or how about Tracey Emin’s big, undoubtedly ‘raw’ picture,where she has scrawled ‘But I Love You’ in blood-red capitals alongwith the words ‘Sometimes I Don’t Think’. This is certain to be a talking point among visitors.

So will Dick Jewell’s image of a sultry young lady posing as Queen Emily I, complete with crown and sceptre. No wonder that Remfry,who explains that this ‘is my first ever Summer Exhibition hang’, admits that ‘I’ve been disconcerted one moment and revived with beef tea the next!’ Even Leonard McComb has come up with a painting far more earthy than the saints he is showing in Gallery VI. Here,we find his full-length painting of a naked woman clasping a vase of flowers and looking impassioned. Another dramatic surprise is provided by Anthony Green, whose large painting explodes outwards. Its
Ken Howard, 'Dora, Summer Interior, Cornwall' Photo: John Bodkin/DawkinsColour multi-angled edges contrast with the self-portrait at its centre, where Green sits on a chair and rests three fingers calmly on his left sleeve.

Roy Oxlade’s works are painted in a deliberately ‘raw’ style, reminiscent of graffiti on a street wall. And Rose Wylie’s Green Bat seems to be screaming at the sky. Calm is restored by Ken Howard’s typically serene Dora, Summer Interior, Cornwall. But Howard has also produced a fiercely political painting, where a child stands near a vast wall scrawled with alarming protest slogans like ‘Deaths by Atrocity’.

• Royal Academy of Arts