The Kerlin Gallery, in terms of talent, can command what sports commentators usually call "strength in depth". Its present group exhibition proves just that, with an impressive slew of names which runs from quasi-conceptualists such as Dorothy Cross to established painters such as Barrie Cooke and Stephen McKenna. It also manages to do so without overcrowding, a recurrent vice in this type of event.
For me, the highlights are the three works on paper by Brian Maguire; Felim Egan's spacious, impressive painting Passage; and John Kindness's sculpture Dog, in the unusual combination of cast bronze and gold. Felim Egan, in particular, seems to be moving away from the thin, almost papery paint surfaces which he had favoured for some time, and to be stressing the physical aspect of the medium more - as he used to do earlier in his career.
Kindness continues to show a highly individual, almost macabre visual wit which does not detract from his genuine sculptural sense.
Paul Seawright's large photograph (on aluminium) has a very special sense of focus, and he is one of the rather rare practitioners of the medium (in this country, at least) who can handle colour with full confidence, not to say taste. Kathy Prendergast, Dorothy Cross, Richard Gorman are also well represented in an exhibition which rises effortlessly above the rather neutralised, uniform level of most mid or late-summer group shows.
Until September 15th
