Review: The Royal Academy of Arts in North Yorkshire, Zillah Bell Gallery, Thirsk

HUMOUR is rarely the first thing that comes to mind in connection with the serious business of print making – though satire has a long provenance dating back to Hogarth – so it is refreshing to start this exhibition with a few smiles.

Artist and print maker Norman Ackroyd, who made this selection from the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition print room, has amassed nearly 90 contemporary prints across the full range of techniques, from traditional woodcut to modern inkjet, and has hung the show so it follows a logical sequence of themes and treatment revealing the versatility of the genre at the hands of leading exponents.

For rural visitors, Chris Orr's Farming Today – anything but, judging by this assembly of figures, animals and equipment – leads to characters street dancing in San Francisco The Musical by the same artist, followed by a set of 13 shadowy and saucy etchings by Steven Chambers, Life and Love of Casanova, which together prepare the way for a dance floor embrace in a fusion of flaming movement and knowing looks by Allen Jones.

After this uplifting start, it is on to more thought-provoking subjects, such as Jane Glynn's suggestion of narrative in Empty Spaces, Human Traces, a gloomy deserted bathroom defined in subtle modulations of monochrome.

There is wit in Cornelia Parker's Stolen Thunder II, poking fun at the gallery process of showing and selling, with red stickers running wild on a work superimposed on two other sold pictures, the dots echoing the motif of an abstract on the opposite wall.

Particularly impressive are subjects dealing with geographical locations. Joe Tilson's over-sized collage work evoking Venice can be contrasted with Elizabeth Blackadder's sensitive etching of the same city.

Neil Pittaway's striking architectural forms in Chrysler/Empire, highly detailed and slender, are matched by the elegance of Anne Desmet's luminous domes of St Paul's at night, while the figure of London's mayor embattled in a rowing boat on the Thames offers satirical contrast.

Martin Davidson's woodcut Chalk Cliff describes nature at its most monumental.

Elsewhere, natural history, fantasy, landscape and abstract patterns are found in a show that abounds in inventiveness and individuality. The exhibition continues until November 1.