For the first time we have Bermuda?s version of a Salon des Refus?s, an exhibition of work rejected by the jurors of this year?s National Gallery Biennial. It is to be seen at the Kafu Gallery, up outside stairs at 8, Parliament Street opposite the new Atlantis Building. It is a slightly unusual experience in that Kafu is also a hair salon and the pictures are to be viewed over the heads of ladies in hair dryers and other stages of the hair process. Don?t be deterred, it is an experience worth trying.

The most interesting factor of this show, which displays much of what the Biennial jurors didn?t include at the National Gallery?s much ballyhooed show, is the extent to which local artists have been cowed into producing work designed to appeal to the kind of juror the staff of the National Gallery is now well known to employ. It also makes quite clear why so many of our best artists don?t even bother to submit their work to the Biennial at all. They can?t be bullied into producing work not in their usual style just to suit the National Gallery?s notion of what ?contemporary? art ought to look like.

?Contemporary? is a horribly abused word in the art world. It is a fashionable but meaningless alternative to the equally abused word ?modern?. Now that we have the idiotic term ?post-modern?, modern has entirely lost its meaning. It thus leaves the more pretentious people in the art world without anything to describe what is being painted now. The National Gallery uses ?contemporary? to replace ?modern? because modern to them means something other than modern. Contemporary is an entirely meaningless word unless we are told what it is that something is contemporary with. Van Dyke?s works were contemporary with King Charles I. Without a time anchor ?contemporary? by itself is mere linguistic clap-trap.

Of the artists shown at the Kafu Gallery and at the Biennial, almost the only one to hew to her own last is Sharon Wilson. Her work has advanced considerably in the years I have been away from the local scene and suits the prejudices of the Biennial jurors better than many. In this show her rejected works include an architectural scene of fascinating composition and light treatment. The composition is rectangular, roughly thirds within thirds within thirds, the foreground in shade, the background in sun. Almost proto-cubist, it surprisingly failed to pass muster with the jurors. The other is an exquisite scene in her best genre tradition of two children on a beach in near monochrome.

Astonishingly Sheilagh Head is showing a pair of abstracts in her best style, ?Dark Tide? and ?Shifting Tide?. The brushwork and colour composition are everything one can expect from this distinguished artist. They convey the mood suggested in the titles perfectly. Why the jurors rejected these and accepted the ?send-up? canvas defies comprehension.

Otto Trott, another distinguished Bermudian artist, had an admirable work in comprehensibly rejected by the Biennial. ?Flatt Calm? is a marine scene in his best tradition, a view over Flatts inlet in a calm so tangibly still that one feels almost breathless before it. Still as it is, and the tide must have been conveniently on the turn for it to be so still, his reflections are not, as they never are, perfect, but gently distorted as they always are by the gentle undulations of water.

Another artist to be seen here and at the Arts Centre at the Dockyard, but incomprehensibly missing from the Biennial is Kok Wan Lee. Here he shows a masterly charcoal abstract in sweeping, swirling chiaroscuro style.

Vaughan Evans? woodcuts shown here were presumably rejected as less suited to the style of the three in the Biennial, and indeed they have less immediacy, but are nonetheless powerful for that.

Kevin Morris, prominently hung in the Biennial, has another large canvas here. There didn?t seem much to chose between those of the Biennial and this elaborate, painstaking collage other than that the National Gallery might have found the subject matter of this one unsuited to the many children who go there.

Very large canvasses with montage treatments were also submitted by Glen Wilks, and rejected. One, a triptych titled ?The Kiss?, was grounded in glowing sunny colours and then festooned with montage lips as well as painted ones. The other was an uncomfortable quadripartite composition called ?Six Million Ways to Like One Path?, largely because that odd message was painted into the work any number of times. More effective was ?Blue Moon Rising?, a surreal scene of a moon sustained on gold wave-or flame-like swirls against a twilight sky.

Manuel Palacio never fails to catch the eye with his overtly sexual works, none of which transgress to the pornographic. Here it is a mixed media sculpture of the back half of a woman?s torso, aggressive in its hyper-reality and suitably titled ?Cussed Blessing?. His in-your-face style never quite manages to shock, but always commands attention.

Another artist, this time a photographer, who uses the human body effectively is Troy Jennings. He is here represented by two very different digital photographs, one of a splayed body builder effectively mounted across the face of a piece of Fabian stripped cliff. In complete contrast with the sheer power of this photograph is the subtle serenity of ?Morning Glow?, a sensuously draped young girl seated, half turned away from the camera at the water?s edge on a beach. The softness of the light and subtlety of the colouring entrances the viewer.

I doubt if I would have included Andrea Carter?s acrylic ?Penguin Colony? in the Biennial either, but as a piece of clever design and pattern that sweeps the eye elegantly around its canvas, this work definitely has class.

This is, as might be expected, an educational exercise in the art politics of the Bermuda National Gallery. Not only as such, but also for its varied and interesting content, this is a show well worth a visit. The Kafu Gallery isn?t easy to find, so persevere.