Bermuda gombey dancer provides the theme for this year's Annual Members' Show at Dockyard.

Within this rather restricted framework, which is intended to complement the upcoming African show at the Bermuda National Gallery, there is a surprising variety of approach, with an equal division between pictorial compositions and craftwork from about 15 exhibitors.

Claiming attention on the main wall of the gallery is Lynn Morrell's Festival quilt, its plume motif fanning in a swirl of brilliantly bold colours.

Versatile as ever, she also displays some of her exquisite silver and semi-precious stone jewellery, all with an African theme and ranging from multi-coloured bead necklaces to Botswana silver and agate earrings.

There are some attractive pieces of batik panels by Victoria Brenner, mostly in rich earth colours. Her work, entitled "NTA'', reveals traditional masks in varying sizes, while Bamileke captures a real sense of mystery with its enigmatic facial image framed by luxuriously fringed and plaited hair.

One of the problems in painting pictures of gombeys is that they so easily lend themselves to the decorative and even caricature idiom. But there are two oils which have escaped this trap by reverting to impressionism. The first is a highly evocative work by Jaqui Murray-Hall which captures, with finely sensitive brushwork, the frenzy of feathers and beads as they pulsate to the drum rhythms.

The second is by Grant Hall, a newcomer to the exhibition circuit, who shows promise with his treatment of The Gombey Dancers. He uses gobs of paint, applied with some panache by a knife or spatula; there is the feeling that he found enormous satisfaction in creating this atmospheric portrayal.

There are two delightful bronze sculptures by Elizabeth Ann Trott, And Still I Rise, where an elderly man plays a fiddle as he dances mirthfully on his way, and Dancing with Grampa, which depicts an old fellow in a sun hat, clasping a child in his arms. Both convey an arresting sense of vitality and warmth.

Helen Daniel has ignored the gombey theme but there is certainly a new look to her set of eight small gouache paintings. The Bermuda scenes, which would make a suitable setting for the dancers as they weave their way through the Bermuda countryside, are aglow with jewel-like colours.

Also well worth a lingering look is Barbara Henry's beautifully worked embroidery of Gombey Fantasy, Diana Watlington Rootnik's rather soft watercolours of whirling dancers, and Shirley Tuzo's series of dancers depicted in finely worked decoupage. In her printed history of Bermuda's gombeys which accompany this set, she states that masks were "a custom started during slavery, to hide the dancers' identities from their masters.'' This was no doubt true, but presumably only part of the story, in that the use of masks must almost certainly have reflected the traditions of African culture which had prevailed for centuries -- a point that is central to next month's National Gallery show and emphasised in its very title, Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals.

Last, but never least, is Peter Woolcock's inimitable cartoon, in ink and colour wash, of an irate woman, surrounded by a gombey troupe and admonishing a masked and feathered apparition to "Come out, Willard''. -- Patricia Calnan.