Yes, it’s that time of year again.

Where else could you pick up a litter bin for £26,000, assuming you are not fortunate enough to be in charge of the Gwynedd Council Recycling Department?

That’s right — the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

This masterpiece of bronze and paint into which I’d unfortunately just dropped a snotty tissue was by Michael Landy RA, and was titled Self Portrait As Rubbish Bin. He was asking £26,000 for it.

I do realise I am hopelessly middle brow and hopelessly middle class, but in this instance I am totally out of my depth. I cannot understand — will never understand — why something like this should be seen as Art, or why Landy could command so much money for it. Would any private individual actually buy such an object? I doubt it. It is a tool designed to extract cash from institutions, probably publicly funded ones at that. I am torn between admiration for the (con?) artist and irritation with something that is patently not Art. And don’t throw Duchamp’s Fountain at me — that was a shocking statement a century ago, whereas this merely looks manipulative and silly.

Looking back over past reviews of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, I see that I was beginning to get restless with the same old same old. I’m delighted to report that this year it is actually different. The new coördinator is Tess Jaray, and full marks to her — she has done a great job, and it’s a wonderful, must-see show.

The most noticeable of Jaray’s innovations is to empty the Small Weston Room of all those fascinating little artworks by unknown artists and spray them in waves along the walls of the large galleries. If that means dropping a few gigantic, portentous works by major old farts, then so be it. It is much the better for it. Last year I expressed the wish to get Jaray down a dark alley some night. She curated the works in one gallery, and not only elbowed in four copies in different colours of her own identical work, but had the arrogance, snobbery and condescension to announce in print that her selection was “only for people who are sensitive, intelligent and thoughtful. No one else will enjoy it.”

This year I’ve evidently become sensitive, intelligent and thoughtful. Or else she’s grown up. The Small Weston Room was given over to the obligatory video installation, this time given over to a man attempting to destroy a cello, Trilogy: Kettle’s Yard by Jayne Parker. After 90 seconds of this my everloving wife whispered “Are we in here because you wanted to sit down?”

There were of course, some old familiar faces: Ken Howard’s immediately recognisable Venetian veduti, Michael Craig-Martin’s ruddy letters, David Mach’s fascinating coathanger sculptures and a playing card portrait of Snoopy, Tracey Emin and so on. A clerihew sprang to Mr & Mrs Headley’s minds:

I’m not taken in
By Tracey Emin
Her style is too fractured
To leave me enraptured.

What else caught the eye? We liked Holding Myself Together So Far And No Significant Bleeding by Effie Jessop, hand embroidered on linen and decorated with what appeared to be 4 point Letraset. Ann Winder-Boyle’s England A Century Of Change could have been subtitled “Five Go Looting”, an image of 1950s schoolgirls pillaging a local corner shop. A small wooden disc and a thin stick were credited to Roger Ackling and were offered for sale at £3,400 and £1,500 respectively. We didn’t feel this represented value. Likewise we didn’t care for Fiona Rae RA’s work, scattered throughout several galleries. Too reminiscent of the remainder bin at Clintons Cards.

I’m always seduced by the clever, detailed works, such as Larousse by Alexander Korzer-Robinson, and Fiction II from Phil Shaw, a bookshelf of spines of 1950s novels — or nearly: On The Bleach; The Son Also Rises; East of Eton; Lady Chatterley’s Hoover etc. Some work was simply breathtaking, technically, such as Colin Davidson’s masterly Portrait of Brian Kennedy.

Others served to annoy. Two works in red, black and white were innocently juxtaposed: Portrait of Sir Terry Frost by Neil Shawcross and Untitled No. 33 by Callum Innes, for which he was requesting sixty six thousand pounds. Disgraceful. The Shawcross was not for sale. North Road II by Patricia Burns was bleak and beautiful. I loved the hyperrealism of Lee Madgwick’s The Devoted Gardener, below, but then I have a soft spot for ruins.

My soft spot for ruins should be well known, after seven books on follies and grottoes, but much to many peoples’ amazement I am not is possession of a folly or grotto myself. However if I was, I would have no hesitation in snapping up Olu Shobuwale’s Chicken Chair, only £1,200 for a chair made entirely from bones. Perfect grotto material.

Kenny Hunter’s cute little Monument to A Mouse stopped us in our tracks. We’d seen it before, only much bigger. Then we remembered — it was this image by Arch White on fotoLibra. The big version of the Mouse Monument stands in Alloway, Scotland.

And finally to what you’ve all been waiting for yet again — the result of my annual Get Rid Of Lazy Thinking Among Artists campaign. This year’s tally is FORTY THREE — that’s right, 43 — out of 1,474 works exhibited were titled “UNTITLED”. How pathetic. Last year it was 18 out of 1,117. This is a distressing trend. I blame Cameron & Clegg. And the Olympics.

And probably Tess Jaray. Again.