The Emmerson Family, that is Mark and Rhona Emmerson and two of their children, Hannah and Joshua, are participating in an exhibition at the Onions Gallery of the Bermuda Society of Arts.

The Emmerson family is endowed with considerable artistic abilities. Mark is a well-known photographer, while Rhona is a painter, as well as a graphic designer.

Hannah is also multi-talented, but is best known for her jewellery designs. Joshua is presently studying art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He is likewise, a person of various artistic skills.

This is a huge exhibition. I cannot even begin to tell you just how many pieces are in the show, but it is a lot.

The best that I can do is to select just a few works that stand out and highlight them.

Mark Emmerson is best known for his platinum prints, of which he has nine in this exhibition. This is not the only thing he has done, however, for in this show, he also has “appropriated” a selection of black and white photographs from old negatives presently stored in the Archives.

Some go back well into the 19th century. I noticed one with a date of 1850. Some may question the ethics of appropriation, but it has a fairly long history in Modernism; the primary example being the lifting of the Mona Lisa by Marcel Duchamp.

The quintessential Postmodernist, Sherrie Levine, is known for her appropriation of historic photographs and her subversion of the modernist myth of originality. To be fair, however, she always gives credit to whomever made the original work.

In Mark Emmerson’s case, however, many of the photographers, whose work he uses, are apparently unknown. The resurrection of old photographs reveals to us a Bermuda now long gone and in this respect, Mark Emmerson is doing us a service, for they represent part of our photographic heritage.

Mark Emmerson is also showing a selection of his colour photography. I suppose I should not be surprised, but I do remember him arguing the superiority of black and white photography. His view of the headquarters building of the Bank of Bermuda almost makes it look like a respectable piece of architecture.

Rhona Emmerson is exhibiting a large number of her paintings, possibly the two strongest being, “Morning Light, St. George’s”, and “Down the Lane, St. George’s”.

These are larger than most of her other paintings, but also somewhat more structured. Most of her landscapes are noted for their use of light and colour.

I am reminded of the paintings of Thomas Kincaid, but Mrs. Emmerson’s paintings are, thankfully, devoid of the sugary sentimentality of a typical Kincaid. Actually, Rhona Emmerson’s paintings exhibit a kind of magical light and personally, I found her work highly appealing.

Hannah Emmerson is mostly showing jewellery, but she also has two unusual paintings in, “Female Splash” and “Male Splash”.

These painting were produced by first painting a body and then having that person lie down and imprint his or her body onto the canvas.

This is indeed reminiscent of that noted French modernist,Yves Klein’s “Vampire”.

This is a painting, produced as early as 1960, in which he did exactly the same thing, in what we know as body art.

And now to jewellery, but here I must confess that I have little or no background and usually feel inadequate to write about the subject; in Hannah’s case, however, I feel a little more comfortable, for they seem to me like miniature sculptures.

One work is actually derived from one of her earlier sculptures of a swan. Another piece is inspired by a new moon in which the crescent moon is made of bright gold with a miniature azurite caving of a face in profile within it.

Joshua Emmerson is still in art college, but at the age of 18, he along with six other Bermudians joined 47 other students for a year-long sail around the world on the tall ship, Concordia.

Much of what he is exhibiting, are photographs taken on the voyage. Doubtless, he gained much from watching his father at work, for his pictures are sensitive and quite naturally composed.

For him, it appears the most natural thing to do. I will mention three works that possibly stand out as his finest. I think of “Enough for Two”. This is of two red umbrellas and two empty chairs on a beach, with the bottom of the umbrellas lining up with the horizon. Another is of “Regina and Friend”.

In this photograph, Regina is seen holding a snake at eye level. The expression is one of fear and dread. Finally, I was drawn to “In the End”. Here a person sitting at the end of a long jetty, that juts out into a bay.

On each side there is the enveloping mouth of the bay protruding inward. It is a bilaterally symmetrical composition that is very effective. The exhibition continues until November 22.