THIS is still the silly season, relatively speaking, and the time when most galleries have mixum-gatherum group shows, more or less undemanding in character. However the Solomon Gallery's exhibition, while both a mixum and a gatherum, certainly should not be bypassed. It brings together "local talent" along with works by Dufy, Yeats, Derain, Matisse, no less, and deserves full points for its unseasonable initiative.
The Picasso is an ink drawing, stylish but a souffle. The Dufys include two of his marine watercolours, elegant, blithe, and with more to them than a quick look might reveal, and they remind you how much artists such as Norah McGuinness and Jack Hanlon must have owed to him. The Derain is a particularly soignee, neo-classic nude, and it seems to inhabit another continent than Jack Yeats with his "bruiser", i.e. professional boxer.
However, the School of Paris does not occupy the whole centre-stage. There are two small Ben Nicholsons, some head studies by Elizabeth Frink an ink drawing by Lucien Freud, a very interesting head of Leon Kossoff by John Lessore, works by Henry Moore, four monotypes by F.E. McWilliam. A big charcoal work by David Inshaw, of a couple seated at a table, shows that he is much more convincing in straight realism than in quasi-surrealism.
There is a typical Hockney drawing of two gay friends and a Burra which is characteristically clever, meretricious and sexily "camp." Conor Fallon, Hector McDonnell, Martin Mooney and Peter Collis are well represented, keeping a balance of home and foreign.
. Runs until September 11th.