title. In the Eye of the Beholder

The artist is a highly regarded printmaker and lecturer. The exhibit however, on first glance, seems to be that of a sculptor or installation artist and yet this tells us a great deal about the current state of the visual arts where all the old boundaries have become extremely blurred.

Printmaking, in my view, was originally developed to make available multiple copies of a visual art object. Usually they were works on paper and produced in a limited edition indicated by an edition number of 10 to perhaps 200 prints.

Nowadays such editioning tends to be less common and prints are frequently on materials other than paper.

Looked at in this more open-ended mode,

Hummerston's exquisite little installations could be considered virtually as prints, for in each art work there is a three dimensional figure as small as one of Mary Norton's "Borrowers". They produce a family of types who are all staring fixedly at a small fragment of reality frozen between two sheets of screwed together clear perspex.

The objects themselves range widely from parking tickets and identify discs to 20th century devices aimed at restricting the growth of

families.

The works occupy eye level space, running like a mid wall frieze around the whole gallery.

They create something like a slice through 20th century life that recalls those canisters that communities like to seal and leave on the moon or in the foundations of buildings or special places and which it is thought might one day puzzle 24th century archaeologists. They recall the miniature worlds made by the sculptor Charles Simmonds and the larger mainstream high art avant-gardeism of Peter Tyndall. There is a sense of humour permeating each witty piece but below it all there is a hidden hint of menace which makes a change from the merely angst ridden artistic post mortems that occur in major international art exhibitions.

The artist tells us in the title of one work to work it our for ourselves. As his catalogue notes define "only the viewer can bring to life and imbue with meaning.

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HARRY HUMMERSTON

Art Space, Claremont

Reviewed by Neville Weston