Cats, flowers and Harry Hill’s car on fire – RA Summer Exhibition review

Royal Academy, London
Bowie karaoke in a cupboard, a gross David Gamble self-portrait and Harriet Porter’s serene silver pot are a welcome distraction from the tidal wave of landscapes and famous artists’ hand-me-downs for sale

This year’s RA Summer Exhibition is less awful than usual. It’s still full of some of the worst art you’ve ever seen – way too many Michael Craig-Martins and Bob and Roberta Smiths – but its awfulness is definitely a bit less awful.

This relative less-awfulness is partly thanks to Ryan Gander, the conceptual artist who is the coordinator of this year’s exhibition. He’s brought a little bit of strangeness to this stuffy old show, a bit of weird discomfort to the world’s oldest open submission exhibition, where amateurs get to have their tiny drawing of a flower totally eclipsed by a massive Tracey Emin nude. What a privilege.