Nudists at the palace

Nudists frolicking in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, a portrait of Kylie Minogue alongside her famous bottom, an enormous sculpture of a chicken and even good, old-fashioned landscapes: this year's Summer Exhibition promises to be as entertaining as ever.

Now in its 235th year, the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art is as much a part of the season as Royal Ascot or Wimbledon.

This year's curators are displaying more than 1,200 paintings, sculptures and architectural models, some by Royal Academy members and hundreds more by amateur and professional artists from across Britain.

In the exhibition, which opens next Monday, architecture takes pride of place as never before. As well as its usual architecture gallery there is a one-off room curated by Sir Norman Foster dedicated to the world's greatest skyscrapers - from the ancient Mayan pyramids of Tikal to the tower at One Canada Square.

The astonishing collection of models also features buildings that don't exist - the World Trade Center twin towers, included to provoke debate about how to design skyscrapers in the wake of 9/11, and models of unbuilt designs. Sir Norman said his installation, called Sky High, presents "a timely opportunity to explore the arguments in favour of higher densities and, in selective locations, the use of taller structures".

Among the paintings and sculpture on show are two irreverent works by Brit-Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman - who are hotly tipped for Turner Prize nomination this week. Already, their RA sculpture The Marriage of Reason and Squalor - an oddly misshaped elephant on a plinth - has earned them a spot on the £25,000 shortlist for the Wollaston Award, awarded to the "most distinguished" work in the exhibition.

An irreverent series of collages by David Mach turns London into a pleasuredome, with sunbathers cavorting on a beach by the Houses of Parliament and those nudists enjoying themselves at the Buckingham Palace end of St James's Park. Mach also creates the only work to be shown outside in the RA's courtyard - a sculpture of a fireeater called Hell Bent that will, apparently, breathe real fire.

For the first time a room will be devoted to the work of London's graduating art students, but the breadth of opening submissions shows how many skilled, relatively unknown artists are at work around the country.

Dilek O'Keefe's print Consumerism 2, Talent seems to suggest the reason behind Kylie Minogue's fame is her behind.

Poet Michael Horovitz has his Royal Academy debut alongside and there is a landscape print by former Frankie Goes to Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson.