The Bermuda National Gallery's Biennial exhibition is always something of a surprise, as any juried show tends to be. The personal idiosyncrasies and personal preferences of the jurors inevitably affect the resulting show.

So, in this case, does an obvious desire to be on someone's idea of the cutting edge in art. Galleries, and critics, too, would do well to remember that novelty does not necessarily equate with quality.

This year's cutting edge all too often becomes next year's blunt instrument, quickly thereafter finding its way to the trash heap. This is not, then, a show that can qualify as displaying the best of Bermuda's art produced over the last two years.

The first thing that is glaringly obvious is the complete absence of most of Bermuda's best artists. There is not a single canvas by John Kaufmann.

There isn't a brushstroke from Stephen Card, despite the fact that his canvasses now adorn a great many of the walls of the new . No works by Norma Christensen, Maria Smith, Diana Tetlow, Eldon Trimingham III or Otto Trott are to be found anywhere.

No photographs by Ann Spurling, Scott Stallard or DeForest Trimingham are to be seen, nor is sculpture from the hands of Desmond Fountain, Chesley Trott, or Elizabeth Trott.

This is an enormous artistic gap. There may be any number of reasons for this shockingly vast omission, including, I gather, that some of these artists refuse to submit their work to the arbitrary selection process, a process previously conducted using photographs of the submitting artists' works.

The most obvious strike against this method of selection is that not every artist can afford the quality of photograph necessary to show his work in the best light.

A cursory comparison of the photographs of the artists' work in the catalogue with the actual works in the gallery will adequately demonstrate my point.

No sculpture was ever fairly represented in photographs. This may be a necessary method of elimination in much larger countries, but Bermuda is a tiny island and such an invidious method of selection cannot be either necessary or, in default of professionally qualified art or sculpture photographers, desirable. The national gallery does itself no service by thus alienating some of our best artists and its Biennial is considerably diminished in quality thereby.

In the present instance the jurors actually did see all the works entered in an omnibus session, though even this may have removed from contention sculptures of any size in bronze, too heavy to move around easily.

Whatever the problems, one's first impression on entering the gallery is that the jurors were absolutely set against anything resembling a traditional concept of art.

With not too many exceptions, the works that greet the eye first are distinguished by an in your face, but nonetheless already dated, modernism and a lack of technical facility in the various media attempted. Some of these, notably Kevin Morris' three works, muddle their media. Morris deals in word and photo images and is, one may assume, the victim of the 'soundbite' world of television, reduced to, perhaps, an advertisement bite of word images.

Critics work in words using art as their raison d'?tre; an artist who uses words as his raison d'?tre can only baffle.

Graham Foster, whose impressive painted work disturbs and intrigues, is here represented only by sculpture, mainly of African inspiration and executed in found objects. They are as disturbing as any of his work, spiky and uncomfortable. The more impressive work, Trinity, already shown at the Ace Gallery, is the most African derived.

Edwin Smith' bikes are an attempt at highly representational art that are wanting because they are technically inadequate.

Such an intense emotional application to a commonplace subject requires an exaggeration of which photography is incapable, but a technical facility that is here lacking.

Katherine Harriott's work in screen wire obviously intrigued the jurors. She has four works on display. I have seen work in screen wire that is technically far beyond Ms Harriott's standard and produces an extra dimension unavailable to ordinary sculpture.

The work, however, needs to be understandable. One work, Sutures, a medical term for stitches, would make any surgeon cringe. I wondered whether it was inspired by a bad hair transplant or a botched depilation. After I had studied it I had the opportunity to listen to the artist explain her work. With the best will in the world I couldn't follow her thought through to her execution. More comprehensible was Emily, clearly intended to be a representation of a corset, a form of self inflicted torture that is anathema to the modern woman.

Had it been more successfully representational, the impact of the piece would have been more immediate. I was much more comfortable with Bang, though why there were three when the universe apparently derives from only one was confusing.

Charles Zuill, as ever following his own rather bleak vision, has two works acceptable to the rather retro-avant garde, if I may coin an oxymoron, taste of the jurors.

He has abandoned his rather earthy, but arid mode and taken to a style not unlike the inside bindings of Victorian leather backed books.

One was reminiscent of the outer reaches of the ice-pack at either pole, the other of a magnified version of a style of flooring, now long out of fashion, known as terrazzo. I liked both of them.

There is an oddity in this show, thought to be far out on the cutting edge of art gallery bravado. It is a video/sound 'installation'. To my way of thinking it is quite out of place in an art gallery, whatever the Whitney may be doing.

We have a film festival, now taking its place on the crowded world stage of such festivals. This is where video/sound productions seem to me to belong.

In an art gallery it is both obtrusive and disruptive, even when set up at the back of the upper level of the gallery where most of the lesser works were relegated.

The truly striking works in the main part of the gallery were both from long established artists. Three very powerful woodcuts by Vaughan Evans, all self-portraits, glare balefully out and stop the viewer in his tracks.

Harsh and uncompromising they portray the artist in a way utterly in contrast with the amiable man many of us know. At the opposite end of the black and white spectrum are four platinum prints by Mark Emmerson, serene, peaceful, composed, and breathtaking.

For an avowed traditionalist who is suspicious, after many years of experience, of the cutting edge in anything, there is however, still more respite in this disconcerting show.

It has been hidden away in the Watlington gallery, rather as though the jurors were a little embarrassed by it. Turning left at the entrance is by far the most impressive work in the show, a portrait in pastel of Betsy Mulderig by Sharon Wilson.

Many of us know and like Betsy. This is a Betsy we know must be there but is almost always concealed behind the mildly whimsical image of herself Betsy chooses to show, an image we can easily associate with her own fascinating work.

Once seen, this portrait will induce second thoughts. Here is a strong, entirely self-possessed woman of inflexible determination and vision.

Sharon Wilson has an international reputation as a genre painter and has developed her style to great effect in the years I have been away from the local art scene.

This is splendidly demonstrated in the more subtle colours and brilliantly effective compositional treatments of her other two works, Players and Francisca, by themselves outstanding in this show.

Ms Wilson could easily leave her genre painting behind, sad though this would be, and carve out for herself a new career as a portrait artist and grow quickly rich at it.

Sheilagh Head's one work in this show was quite possibly, knowing Mrs. Head's usual work and her sense of humour, designed to send up the jurors.

If so she succeeded. Her exuberance not infrequently moves her into the abstract, a mode she enjoys more than I do. This abstract, however, verges on the sloppy.

The paint is thin, the treatment hurried, as though she had done the painting to get rid of the paint on her brushes before cleaning them after some serious work. As a send up it is immensely successful. If it isn't, I apologise.

In the hanging of this show there is one particular stroke of near genius: the juxtaposition of Ian Macdonald Smith's reflection photographs, Bergen and Hudiksvaal Watercolours, with Jonah Jones' oil, Water Calligraphy. Beauty is in the eye of the artist. A photographer sees it and captures it; a painter sees it and creates his own vision from it. Here together are the two methods using a single inspiration.

All three alone are worth a visit to the gallery. As a matter of personal pride I picked out Jonah Jones many years ago as an artist to watch when he was still a chef and painting, still none too well, as a compulsive hobby.

With this very small claim to fame, I am happy still to be riding on his coat tails.

Returning to his roots as an artist is Daniel Dempster. Over the years he has tried and been found wanting in a great many media. Here he has returned to the exacting rendition in charcoal and chalk of shallow water and rock that we remember so vividly from his early work.

So precise that one feels able to wet one?s hand in it. It nevertheless is a work of art that could not be replicated on film. The precision of treatment matches an acuteness of vision.

Scattered here and there around the gallery is the eccentric, wonderfully humorous work of Will Collieson. It defies description, classification or comparison.

I have never found anyone who didn't enjoy it. It's fun, then, to be able to take tiny issue with one of them. His Chair in Sheep's Clothing is cunningly titled. Unfortunately the sheep?s clothing is goat's hair.

Whatever else one may make of the National Gallery's Biennial this year it has enough of most things to excite both admiration and dislike.

To miss it would be to miss the opportunity to be both thrilled and riled, no matter your likes or dislikes. It encompasses almost anything except the traditional tried and true.