arrived here, and the enfant terrible of the local art world has expanded into one of the most interesting art groups currently working in Bermuda.

This Thursday, they will mount their second exhibition together -- and although they are more associated with the Arts Centre at Dockyard, this show is being staged in the Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery at City Hall.

Talking to The Royal Gazette about the show, artist Helen Whight says she met fellow artist Will Collieson shortly after she arrived here with her husband.

"It was quite overwhelming to be a stranger in a totally new place, so I decided I had to have a goal. When I bumped into Will again on the street, I just asked him on the spur of the moment if he'd like to do a show with me! Since then we've expanded to five.'' Entitled "Works'' ("we wanted to keep it low-key, just to show what we are interested in''), the show also features the work of Niall Woolf, Helen Daniel and Jennifer Stobo.

Helen Whight, who has an honours degree in Fine Art and Sculpture, went on to teach `A' level art and was head of Ceramics in a large high school in England.

Besides running her own gallery in Cornwall for two years, she has an impressive list of exhibitions to her credit, including solo or group shows in Gloucester Museum and Art Gallery, North Staffordshire Museum and Art Gallery, Keele University and a women's art group show that was shown in Manchester and Lichfield.

"Until I came here, I never really thought about what I produced,'' she muses, adding that her art has not come so naturally to her in Bermuda.

"Sometimes, I felt as if I was working in a vacuum. But I have studio space to work in Dockyard now and it's great to be able to talk and work with the others.'' She emphasises that the group evolved quite casually: "We never sat down and talked about development, or anything.'' Explaining that the overall connection between the five, work-wise, is usually a very loose one, Ms Whight reveals that she and Niall Woolf have liaised together for the City Hall show.

"Niall has made a film. Because of the nature of my work, he felt he could use it in a film and we jumped at the chance to do something experimental, something different. We just got the film back and are editing it in time for the show. Niall's excited because he hardly ever gets the chance to do film work now.'' Bermudian Niall Woolf was educated in England and attended the Wimbledon School of Art, followed by an advanced year in Illustration at St. Martin's School of Art. After working in London as an illustrator and in animation production for television commercials, he returned home and became involved in video production and photography. Today, he and his brother, Jeremy, have formed Woolfworks, a company that specialises in hand-painted furniture and paint treatments for floors and walls.

Says Ms Whight, "Over the past five years or so, my work, which is mainly sculpture, has been about recurring images, so now I'm pushing them to the limit. It's linked with dream imagery -- Chagall and Greek icons come to mind, and the film is a way of taking what I have made and pushing it to another stage to make it move! It's been a new experience to work with someone else, and realising that Niall and I are working together. We both come from the same period of training, artistically, and it seems to work.'' Ms Whight says she is impressed with the progress made by Jennifer Stobo recently. "She is a young artist, but I've seen real growth in her work. She had a group show at the Arts Centre and then she did the `Two by Two' with Will and produced a canvas that really showed her potential. So with this show, she is taking it all a step further.'' Ms Stobo, who attended the Wooster School in Connecticut and then the School of Fine Arts Museum in Boston, is influenced by Georgia o'Keeffe and Mark Rothko: "She has created large canvases, taken objects and, working in oils, has enlarged their scale, using very strong colours and dealing with light.'' Will Collieson, who studied at the Wallasey School of Art, specialises in sculpture, found material assemblages, monoprints and installations. His work was first exhibited when he was only 16, and since then his creations have been shown in the Blue Coat Gallery in Liverpool, and Home Works Gallery in London. His work is to be found in collections on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably in the collection of Lord Ivor Mountbatten.

Helen Daniel, who has a Masters in art and recently married into the painting Evans (Vaughan and Amy) family, says that restrictions imposed by Bermuda's Immigration policies have actually had the effect of helping her work.

"I decided to deal with this positively and used the opportunity to devote myself full-time to painting.'' Well known for her distinctive, small gouache paintings, which are painted on site, Ms Daniel says that when winter finally arrived last year, it forced her to look at other artistic options. It was then that Helen Whight told her of studio space available in Dockyard.

"This has proved to be a wonderful experience which has had a dramatic effect on my work. Time and space have enable me to explore aspects of my work and long-held ideas which, previously, had been impossible to implement.'' For this show she has taken seemingly insignificant objects from the beach and played what she calls "compositional games'' with them.

"Initially, I produced a large collection of drawings which gradually developed into three dimensions. I used a range of materials and processes which were generally unfamiliar to me, making for an exciting learning experience. I believe that drawing is about finding out and discovery, so all the pieces in this show are part of this process.'' "Works'' will be previewed on Thursday, November 10 at the Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery in City Hall, and opens to the public on Friday. The show runs through November 25 and gallery hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"THE WORKERS'' -- Five artists who have joined together to present a group show entitled `Works' which opens at City Hall this week. Pictured are (fro left): William Collieson, Jennifer Stobo, Niall Woolf, Helen Daniel and Helen Whight.