GO: ART: ODDY'S EYE IS ON ORDER.

Byline: Lucy Bell

ONE of the most striking photos in Jason Oddy's exhibition at Leamington is the bleak, bleak exterior of a holiday camp built on Hitler's orders in the 1930s and 40s.

Neue Prora was a 2-mile-long holiday complex built in the Baltic island of Rugen - for 20,000 people at a time. It was later used for military purposes and is now largely derelict.

Inside, the photos reveal the building is just as symmetrically frightening - a mechanical logic forging straight lines for lives to fit into.

Jason Oddy's large-scale photos explore the ways in which the built environment manages and orders our lives.

He likes to challenge and unravel the ideologies embedded in the world around us.

Oddy investigates architectural space in public buildings and makes us ask if they are the neutral places they appear to be - advertising lobbies, airport chapels, the United Nations HQ - or if there is some ulterior motive.

He likes too, to show the failed attempts to impose order. There's a great photo of a sanatorium in Odessa - the gleaming white ideal has given way to cracks in the graying floor, peeling paint on the ceiling and great rusty patches on the long stretches of radiatiors in the corridors.

And he has a mischevious eye, as in his photo of cloakroom rails at the United Nations building in Geneva - a global powerhouse dealing with world peace - with the notice over the top "the administration declines all responsibility".

This exhibition has been brought to Leamington art gallery in collaboration with the Photographer's Gallery, London and is on until June 23. Some of the works are for sale.

Jason Oddy lives and works in London. His work has been in exhibitions in London, Paris, New York and Brussels.

Printmakers' pattern of light

Brenda Hartill and Trevor Price, an exhibition of prints, until May 11 at the Montpelier Gallery, Stratford.

BRENDA HARTILL and Trevor Price are two of the most "consistent and inventive" printmakers who well deserve their reputation and following, says the Montpelier Gallery in Stratford.

This exhibition brings together their new images. Both artists use landscape as a source of inspiration.

In Brenda's collographs (right) you see the shadows, strong light and vibrant colours of Southern Europe and of a childhood spent in New Zealand.Trevor's work is greatly influenced by years of living by the sea in Cornwall - creating subtle marine patterns printed in wonderful pastel shades of overlapping colour.

He also has more figurative and narrative work on show.

A question of modern art

A BIZARRE new interactive art installation is on show at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry from tomorrow until Wednesday.

Please Keep Memory is the name of the installation and the name of the group of Coventry-based artists who have all studied at Coventry School of art and design.

The interactive work is a fusion of music, fine art and digital design.

The three young artists involved are Maxwell Knight, a composer in his final year of study; Nick James, a fine art student in his second year; and Chris Ranken, a design and digital media postgrad student.

The three say Please Keep Memory aims to "seek out the bizarre and turn it on its head." They say they are constantly questioning our concepts of modern art, with their sense of humour always apparent in their work.

You can see their work at Gallery One.

The exhibition is free and open all day.

CAPTION(S):

SPACE INVESTIGATION: An untitled image from the Palace of Nations series by Jason Oddy.