A GOOSE with huge feet; wrapped round the base of its neck, which

hangs sadly down, is a wind instrument, on which a crescent moon is

resting. A leaf, standing on its edge, a cushion of sorts, over which

droops a flaccid penny whistle, on which is perched a bird, erect throat

reaching for the sky in song. A dead bird lying on a fish, beneath a

knife and boomerang. A different bird, with a lyre bird-like tail, a

closed fan that becomes a violin, with a body carried by human, dancers'

legs.

Another crescent moon, ending in a cat's head, so that moon slides

imperceptibly into neck, neck into moon, as the eye travels up or down.

An egg, hatching a foot, on which a bird sits. A goose wrapped round in

rope, its neck forced through a hand mirror. A Dream Bird, upside down,

its head landing on a cushion, with leaves for its legs.

James Castle's beautifully crafted bronzes, painted wood carvings, and

works in painted plaster create a world of marvels beautifully poised

between the two extremes of fairy stories. Neither horrific nor merely

charming, with a lightness of touch that evades neither the depths and

shadows of myth nor the contemporary psychoanalytical knowledge which we

bring to it, these sculptures, like the best rococo mythologies, are at

once entranced and knowing.

This is perhaps most clear in one of the series of mixed media

drawings, some studies for or variations on sculptures, others, like Boy

on Pig, self- contained contributions to the modernist menagerie. Do You

Like Worms? shows a bird-man offering a worm in his beak to a naked

woman with a heart between her breasts. When sexual symbolism is so

transparent, so unrepressed, it becomes less insistent, a natural part

of a complex world of metaphor and metamorphosis, of the innocence of

dreams.

Until November 28.