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This inaugural exhibition at Gallery 222 had contributions from each of the artists who occupy the studios of Umbrella, Townsville 's community etching workshop and artist run gallery. The seven artists worked specifically for the first exhibition making large scale works which were linked by their commitment to current issues. An eighth contributor on the opening night was the writer Colin Campbell who read his Cantos from an Anguished Poet. All present could appreciate the subject's misery, a poet "submerged deeper than Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock."
A strong point of the exhibition is the diversity of style and experimentation combined with the ability of each artist to resolve works using a range of unusual material.
Stephen Hall's work titled A Whole Generation of Magazines Fatally Mutilated is an assemblage of collage elements. He works with pieces of magazines the size of a fist, cellophane, crepe paper, brown paper with touches of spray paint - partly joined together with semi-permanent adhesives and blue lac. He claims the work is part of a game, a jig saw puzzle with interchangeable parts emerging from his past sixteen years work. The imagery evolves while solving problems to do with the aesthetics of picture making.
By contrast the emotional stance in Helen Waterer's work Fields of Green presents a forceful statement. The work is intentionally awkward, with elements of 'bad taste' and clashing colours. A large work comprising nine full size sheets of rag paper joined together so that edges show, it incorporates jade circles and/or an alarm clock, an atomic cloud shape and figures. The greens that merge around the full image, though generally equated with restful vision, here have a more confronting