For children, play is important as a learning process. For artists, it is important in the creative process.

The current exhibition in the Rick Faries Gallery in the Masterworks Museum is a prime example of just how play contributes to art making, there is an obvious playfulness pervading the show.

James Cooper and Jon Legere have joined forces to create an exhibition that will challenge the traditionalists and delight others. Although working together, there is a distinct difference between the way these two artists work.

The cooperative aspect of their joint efforts is more a matter of one leading and the other assisting. In "playing around" they are experimenting with materials, processes and forces.

Often, they're trying out something to see what will happen and then utilising what they have discovered.

James Cooper is a photographer and his area of concentration is primarily the sea. Why the sea? In Bermuda this question might seem foolish, but the artist found difficult to explain, which is understandable.

Often we artists do whatever we do out of some deep-seated inner compulsion that is beyond our ability to enunciate. Fortunately, others find a kinship and attraction to our creations. I suppose that there is always an underlying reason for what we do, but just as in nature, where we find phenomena we cannot always explain, so with our artistic creations.

Sometimes exact meaning eludes us and we have to allow the work to just be.

Many of Cooper's photographs are about some aspect of swimming, diving or jumping in the water. Often they are photographed underwater and the general mood is one of enjoyment, but sometimes with a conceptual twist.

In one of his works, for example, a swimmer is wearing a horse head mask, thereby turning the human into a sea horse. Other pictures suggest the sea in some way, as in his use of a conch, but in this instance he has poured yellow paint on and around it. Nearby are several allamanda flowers, also yellow and each, conch and flower, have in common, a frilly edge.

The relationship is one of having a similar form, although they each hail from disparate realms. In another instance, he uses colour to change a familiar object, as when he painted a bunch of bananas blue and then photographed it.

Jon Legere's most conspicuous creations are experiments in which he uses fire as an element of change. In several instances, he took a painters plastic drop cloth, poured acetone on it and sets it alight. From our conversation, I gather he tried other flammable fluids but found acetone to be the most useful, because of it nature to flash fire. At any rate, the fire melted the plastic, thus changed into a bubbly, sinewy mass. He then spray painted the residue with multiple colours, turning it into something resembling pathological specimens. They are at the same time, both beautiful and sinister.

Interspersed among these larger works are small, rectangular altered photographed. He takes a small photograph and alters it by painting the surface, often with thick brushstrokes of contrasting colours.

An addition to the exhibition is a jointly produced video. In it, these artists photographed each other at work, as when James Cooper, while underwater, wrapped his limbs with colourful bands, or Jon Legere, by means of fire, created his melted plastic productions. The video is important because it allows the audience to view creativity in process.

This is, yet again, another challenging exhibition. Because of the playful and humorous nature of the show, there may be a tendency for some to dismiss it as foolishness.

This would be unfortunate, for the show is lighthearted, playful, something greatly needed in our often harassed existence.

The show continues through September 2.