52June 2015
T
HE current Royal Hibernian
Academy president, Mick
O’Dea, highlights the Academy
as “exhibiting work that is
innovative and representative
of the broad spectrum of best practice
from here and abroad”.
The aspiration is admirable but
should you bother to inspect the present
show you will reveal it as a fiction.
Hyper-inflated self-praise is a hallmark
of RHA communication, artless as it
may be . Perhaps more artful are the
catchy titles for the artworks, a claim no
doubt, to postmodernity.
Art markets are created for finance
not excellence. O’Dea notes that 
saw a “% increase in sales” and
gravely proclaims that “Ireland’s art
investment has clearly turned a corner”.
He sees the gallery as “the perfect spot-
ting ground for the aspiring and
discerning collector”. Amongst the
sponsors are the gullible buyers or deal-
ers. Better-known sponsors include
AXA Insurance, the ESB, and galleries
such as Adams, De Veres and Whytes,
with their attendant vested interests, as
well as the Ireland-US Council and the
Irish Arts Review, edited and presided
over by the elsewhere discerning John
Mulcahy.
The Academy niftily gleans a six-fig-
ure annual grant from the
Arts Council and dis-
penses in-house prize
money of €,
donated by the spon-
sors. The prizes in the
main go to members
in a comforting rota-
tion scheme.
Many RHA mem-
bers are
coincidentally also
members of Aosdána.
The Aosdána ethos of col-
lectivisation and cosy caucus
prevails at the RHA.
Members mixed up in Aosdána
include James Hanley, Veronica Bolay,
Diana Copperwhite, Gary Coyle, Michael
Cullen, Imogen Stuart (recently made a
Saoi by the Aosdána gang), Martin Gale,
Richard Gorman, Charles Harper, Gene
Lambert, Alice Maher, Stephen
McKenna, Carolyn Mulholland, Patrick
Pye, and Barbara Warren. Most of its
members receive the Arts Council
annual cnuas of €, to top up their
takings.
Underpass II by Eithne
Jordan RHA, sister of the
movie-making genius, is
probably the best of a
bad lot in the show,
with its Orson Welle-
sian bleak modernity
though the catalogue
does not record how
she weathers the com-
promises of
collectivisation among
the self-raised cream.
RHA members can, and
do, exhibit up to seven works
without any pre-selection process.
As to the rest, O’Dea is sanctimonious
about open submission for non-mem-
bers. They are permitted to present a
maximum of three works and try their
luck for inclusion at the annual exhibi-
tion. These artists totalled over ,
in . Director, Patrick T Murphy
The RHA’s
185th
Annual
Exhibition.
Review by
Kevin Kiely
Also in this section:
Obesity obeisance 54
Yeats’ poetry 56
Robert O’Byrne and the Beit
Foundation 59
CULTURE
Failing again to nd Caravaggio
Kevin Kiely
CULTURE
DIATRIBE
Exhibition 2015