Society of Arts Gallery at City Hall -- until October 28.

An air of audacity pervades the quiet purlieus of the Society's gallery with the latest group show. It is, however, an entirely uplifting audacity, rooted technically in its diversity of scale, and a refreshingly unpretentious challenge to each viewer's powers of observation.

Will Collieson is undoubtedly one of Bermuda's most original artists, his obsession with `found objects' providing the perfect conduit for a fertile and ever-witty imagination. Indeed, much of the pleasure in this show may be derived from his titles alone, which heighten the sense of irony which permeates his work.

`Game Soup', for example is no less than a hefty pair of antlers rising up from a thick white clay bowl, while `Intsension IV' is heavily symbolic, an intriguing rusted iron contraption which appears to be some sort of press, topped with a wheel, seemingly about to crush an egg which is poised folornly beneath: add to this, the tape recording of a voice reading out instructions on the operation of a computer and the viewer may conclude that this is Mr.

Collieson's very personal vision of hell -- but perhaps it's not as bad as all that, merely a caustic comment on the bump and grind of everyday life. This is the fascinating thing about his work, of course. His is a uniquely tongue-in-cheek vision, never judgmental or rammed down the viewer's throat, but shared playfully with those who want to see.

This quality is most apparent in `Behind a Man's Brain', where a wooden box attached to the wall, reveals a cornucopia of trivia, dug up from who knows where. There is a distinct feeling that precious few brains store the kind of things that enthrall and thrash about in Will Collieson's, but it is left to the viewer to ponder and delight in such objects as a wooden aeroplane model, the toe of a dusty shoe, cricket ball and ancient beer coaster, half a pair of specs that may have been used to peruse a yellowed 1944 copy of The Royal Gazette , a fragment of a painted `pirate' jug with a glowering eye to disconcert the viewer.

Holding sway -- literally, as it is tilted on its side -- is a huge, mast-like piece of timber (now where did that fetch up, and from where, we wonder) kept in place, in his words with `Some Strings Attached'.

William Collieson remains, however, a striking example of that rarity in the art world, a singularly fine draughtsman whose technique is by now so second-nature that he can comfortably afford artistic flights of imagination.

This can best be seen in his sculptures, notably in this show, his `Goat', wrought in spare lines that capture the grace and vitality of the bell-toting animal.

Jennifer Stobo is one of our most interesting young artists, fascinating in that she allows us to tag along as she goes through the artistic twists and turns which form the spring-board of the creative artist. This time around, she is investigating scale in truly dramatic form through the use of very ordinary objects. These are, though, objects which are personally dear to her, being items that have formed part of the background of her journey from child to adulthood.

To do this, she has chosen a selection which includes a pair of splendidly flamboyant, high-laced trench boots (great-grandfather's), a shiny copper kettle (Aunt Bea's), a suitcase (grandma's), a pipe rack and golf bag (both being the property of grandpa).

These pictorial subjects, painted three times over in differing scales take on something of an Alice in Wonderland syndrome, as she herself comments in the exhibition note, where children tend to "remember people (and by extension, presumably, their possessions) as being larger than life.'' So we see her miniature `studies', `multi' canvases where each object is fragmented, and finally the huge, wall-dominating oils which certainly overwhelm, both through their scale and confident lines and clarity of colour.

Stretching endlessly along the entire length of the gallery is the photographic section of this show, devoted to the works of a relative newcomer to Bermuda, Bruno Zupp.

Entitled `American Pictures' and filmed with a Polaroid camera, they date back to 1980, thus preserving, from his perspective, the flavour and essentially domestic aspect of American suburban life. In his notes to the show, he remarks that "lives are not as simple as we remember'', a point underlined, perhaps by his pictures of children, picket fences, American flags, phones and over-spilling ashtrays, to say nothing of Walden-like ponds and `windfall' apples. There is a feeling here that, rather like a mystery novel, we are being fed clues, but it's up to us to decide which are red herrings, or indeed, clues at all to what remains a very private if somewhat haphazard odyssey: what happened, for instance, to the three kids? Have they `made it', or fallen by the wayside? Technically, the very small size makes viewing difficult. There is no choice but to peer long and hard, and that, perhaps, is part of the exhibit's magnetism, and another uniting factor in this exhilarating show.

PATRICIA CALNAN