Unconventional and unusual materials, shining with colour and humour, have transformed the Bampton Gallery. You would not think that Val Hunt's latest shining, patterned fish and birds were made out of drink cans. Many are imprinted with traces of residual graphics suggesting the history and origin of the cans; the picture are labelled, each with a play on words: Beer Moth, Carling Butterfly and A Guinness Dodo. Curled, folded and pleated, the metal glows with a textual quality.
It is only when one get up close to Kate Daunt's layered impressionistic collage, The Rock, that one identifies the tiny photographs of sunbathers, Marilyn Monroe and a teddy. Her Tuscany landscape, Val d'Orcia, with its fastigiate Lombardy poplars and golden fields of corn made of rice grains, shimmers in the heat. The Inca Trail takes one on a journey up the Andes mountains from flashes of sun-drenched blooms to dense plant life and misty heights.
Elizabeth Balkwill has a passion for semi-precious stones which she blends with frosted and clear glass, crystals, enamels, a variety of metals and discarded treasures lurking in charity shops and salvage yards. Consider her delicate necklace made of amethysts intermingled with seed and freshwater pearls and another of precious lapis lazuli flecked with gold.
Two distinctive artists use papier-mâché in an exciting way. Annie Wootton takes layered and pulped paper which she sands and gessoes to make the subtle and textures shades of her collection of horses. Her Classic Horse, with its bronze patina, is reminiscent of the replicas of the Horses of St Mark's in Venice. Moved by Josie, murdered with her mother on a bridle path, she has made a touching image of the young girl (pictured). With her delicate skin shading and luminosity the figure has been influenced by a Florentine bust and that of the young St John in the Ashmolean Museum.
Eleanor Clutton-Brock's view of society is delightfully ironic. Enjoy her clutch of witty cockerels and her virile but smaller bull, Bernardo Bullrush. With his fashionable curls and his twitching mussels he waits impatiently for the lovely Carmincita Cowslip who stands surprised. Don't miss Jackie Green's geometric hooked rag rugs, hard wearing and warm they have been around for centuries. Covered with ground glass Anthony Wilson's zany, unusual figure of Hitler, after Charlie Chaplain's The Great Dictator, kicks the round ball of the world around.
Until March 30. Tuesday to Saturday 10.30am-12.30pm and 2-4pm. Sunday 2-4pm
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