Summer Members Show, City Hall, Hamilton, until August 7.

With 89 works on display this has to be one of the largest, most ambitious shows that any art society has put on lately.

Large and ambitious perhaps, but not necessarily good. Tired might be a better word to describe what's on display here.

I just had the feeling that I'd seen it all before, over and over again -- and I've only been on the Island for nine months.

There are one or two works on display that show a touch of originality, an attempt at something different, but by and large boats, sea, and Hamilton Cathedral is what you get by the bucketload.

Not that seascapes are necessarily a bad thing. Otto Trott has three large oils on display that are mightily impressive. His two seascapes are a little more muted than `House and Garden, Laffan Street', which captures Bermuda's light beautifully.

Manuel Palacio also submitted a seascape, this time looking across the harbour to St. George's. Mr. Palacio is developing a style that is all his own -- presumably because nobody else will go near it.

In `St. George's', a largish oil, Mr. Palacio piles the paint on so thickly it's like looking at the complexion of an aged hooker trying to deny the passing of the years -- not very attractive.

Pigment is not applied with a brush but sometimes squeezed straight from tube to canvas. The result is part painting, part sculpture. Nevertheless impasto is not exactly a ground-breaking technique and the style does nothing for his subject matter.

I also find his indiscriminate use of blobs of primary colour in places where they shouldn't be distracting and unnecessary.

Asking $6,000 for something that fails to capture the essence of the subject never mind presenting us with a different window on the world is a bit rich.

Another disappointment is the one contribution from Maria Evers Smith. In `Boats in the Sunlight' I could see the boats but the sun, always a more difficult element to capture, must have disappeared behind a very large cloud.

Bob Herr is an unpredictable painter. In the past I've dismissed his work as utter rubbish but there's been the odd piece of his that I've enjoyed.

In this show we see the best and the worst of him. `Devonshire Bay' is truly awful. I know that, throughout history artists, writers and poets have been moved by the energy of the sea but the only movement I felt looking at this was a lurch in the pit of my stomach. The canvas was flat and the colours muddy, overworked.

But `Barges on the Thames' evokes a completely different reaction. The forms are a little crude but, despite the lack of technique there is a wonderful sense of colour, light, of feeling.

Neil Duffy's three photographs, `Rust I', `Rust II' and `Decay I, II and III positively stink of the sea. His brilliant image of the bow of a boat was somehow transformed into the rotting ribcage of some giant sea creature.

Other works that stand out are E.J. Mitchell's four squiggly ink portraits and Jason Jones' enamel and acrylic studies of plant life.

Few paintings stand out and I wonder how some works managed to pass the juror's eye. Was the judging panel being too lenient? Perhaps the Society is short of cash and hopes that, by stacking it high, it can make a bundle.

(Unfortunately while stacking it high, BSA isn't selling it cheap -- some of the prices yet again are just unbelievable).

BSA should realise quantity is not a substitute for quality.

Gareth Finighan ARTIST ART