Visual Arts/Aidan Dunne:Inside the Royal Hibernian Academy Members' Drawing Exhibition 2007-2008, at the OPW headquarters, is a much smaller, better exhibition, one that is swallowed up by the uniform, linear presentation and the uneven overall quality.

While the academy is still in a process of transformation, and some of the best pieces are by younger members, it's not a generational issue. One could, though, point to the lack of work by younger women artists, to the extent that there's a bit a boys' club feeling to the whole event. And it's as if a sizeable proportion of the work was made with the artists operating on cruise control.

This is a cause of some concern, given that the academy is gearing up for a reinvigoration of its teaching mission. We need an institution dedicated to the promulgation of classical skills, but not one that will squeeze the vitality out of what should be a living art.

Need we worry?

Perhaps not. Stephen McKenna, the current president, is presumably no stick-in the-mud given his own versatile and enlightened approach to drawing - to which he is totally committed. And Cary Clark, not generally known for the humour in his work, raises a smile with his bathroom self-portrait The Daily Contemplation of Eternity.

The wittily symbolic fig leaf in Clarke's drawing, though, takes another form in Robin Buick's curiously lifeless Exercise in Perspective New York Academy 1988, a title that ostentatiously clothes a view of several nude women on a beach with the trappings of academic respectability. Perhaps it wouldn't matter that much except that the subject pits him against acknowledged masterpieces by Picasso, drawings that flout the rules and are brilliant, and are not, whatever else, studies in perspective.

Somewhere at the heart of drawing is a willingness to take chances, and David Crone's ink study of a Dry Plant does that brilliantly. Not that excellent has to be rooted in risky spontaneity.

Campbell Bruce's intricate tonal composition Courtyard is put together with the sure-footed precision of a Bach fugue, and there is always more to see and another way to look at it. Donald Teskey has made many dark shoreline landscapes, but the one he shows here is as fresh and invigorated as any. Richard Gorman's study for a sculpture is beautifully made and shows another side to a familiar artist. A sculptor, Michael Quane, on the other hand, exhibits a beautifully mysterious portrait drawing. These are some of the best pieces, and your heart lifts to see them.

The odd-sounding title of Paul Ringrose's show at Dalkey Arts Gallery, Gibberellin, turns out to refer to a group of plant hormones associated with growth, and sure enough, his paintings are on one level a celebration of the sheer, overwhelming profligacy of nature. Although he shies away to some extent from the term landscape, what we see is not so much based on as immersed in landscape, presumably a section of the lushly vegetated woodland in West Cork, where he lives.

He shies away from being labelled a landscape painter because in his approach he also responds to other imperatives "abstraction, pattern-making" - something that is borne out by the work.

One can see him tap into the rhythmic energy of natural pattern, an expression of organisms' relentless push towards growth and reproduction, something that Nick Miller accurately termed "shocking" in relation to his own closely observed landscapes.

Each of Ringrose's paintings itemises a bewildering mass of interwoven repeat patterns making up a notional order in such formalised terms as ground cover, shrubs and canopy. What this means from our point of view, looking at the paintings, is tangled walls of vegetation proliferating across the picture surface, filling up every space just as the plants exploit any available niche in the battle for nutrients.

The Natural Reflex, a relatively close view of vegetation, recalls Lucian Freud's extraordinary studies of his back garden. Freud is uncannily sure in terms of his palette, and tonally flawless, both areas in which Ringrose can waver. The catalogue doesn't note what pigment he uses but the yellows tend to be harsh, as do his whites, and his darkest tones can be too dark. These are minor quibbles, because the paintings are, not to put too fine a point on it, terrific (it's really good to be immersed in that world of paint and nature).

And he might even argue that naturalism isn't his primary aim in any case, but such a point does relate to the overall balance of the pictures, which is very much what they are about.

Olivia Musgrave is a fine figurative sculptor in a vein of 20th century neo-classicism represented by such figures as Giacomo Manzu and Marino Marini. Like them, she draws on a recognisable tradition while managing to be contemporary and, being half-Greek, she has a proprietorial claim to classical mythology.

Her latest work, at Jorgensen Fine Art, includes pieces that demonstrate her strengths to perfection. Among them are her Rearing Horse, a medium-sized, elegantly poised and balanced bronze, shorn of anything extraneous, and Amazon Leading, a much smaller piece of a woman leading a trotting horse. It's a magical little work.

Musgrave has made equestrian amazons something of a speciality, and continues to do so here with great success. Turning for Home is a really ambitious, relatively large pair of equestrian figures, a challenge that she more than rises to. She also has a good Salome, sporting the head of St John the Baptist.

She's plump and dainty and a bit mischievous. Less successful, to my mind, are studies of Icarus, dancers and a couple of other subjects. A little humour goes a long way in bronze. But if you are interested in figurative bronze sculpture, you should see this show. It might seem vulgar to mention it but the prices are very reasonable.

Ben Readman's Emanate at the Stone Gallery is a show of paintings that work very well as an ensemble, amounting to more than the sum of their parts. Close-ups of faces feature slightly disturbing views of individuals in states of - what? bliss, or sleep, or death - in a way that recalls Marlene Dumas.

Readman's intersperses the human subjects with dramatically lit landscapes, and a view of a glowing hearth, producing a series of complex emotional interactions. He does not yet have quite the technical proficiency that such highly charged material demands, but he is getting there, and the show is powerfully atmospheric. It's also accompanied by a beautiful commentary by Lili Heller.

The Royal Hibernian Academy Members Drawings Exhibition 2007-2008 The Atrium, OPW, 51 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Tues-Sat 11am-5pm, until Feb 28; Giberellin: Paul Ringrose, Dalkey Arts Gallery, 19 Railway Road, Dalkey, until Feb 23; Olivia Musgrave, Jorgensen Fine Art, 29 Molesworth Street, Dublin, until Mar 1; Emanate: Ben Readman, Stone Gallery, 70 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, until Mar 1st