Skid Deep

THIS is a group exhibition - by Mary Avril Gillan, Patrick Graham, Michael Kane, Nick Miller, Amelia Stein and Lorcan Walshe

THIS is a group exhibition - by Mary Avril Gillan, Patrick Graham, Michael Kane, Nick Miller, Amelia Stein and Lorcan Walshe. It is also a theme exhibition, the theme being portraiture, including self portraits. In fact, the most immediately striking painting is a self portrait by Graham, whose work is not seen often these days - and an utterly individual work it is, too, with a touch of wry, self deprecating humour. It is less cryptic than what we have seen from him recently and it gains in strength by simplification.

Nick Miller's interesting, rather Expressionist style at Hall is a case of one artist painting another one. Amelia Stein's Mona Pictures are in fact photographs, and good ones, too. The single work by Michael Kane, Two People, is in fact a large etching and sticks to black and white.

Lorcan Walshe shows a small, sensitive painting of a child; Mary Avril Gillan three small, related pictures of a male head, in rather dark and moody tones. Basing an exhibition on such a theme is a worthwhile idea, though with a mere 10 works - some of them very small - a certain augmentation of numbers might have strengthened it. Portraits, however, do not grow on trees.