Twenty years ago, drawn together by commitment and enthusiasm, ARTEL was formed by a number of local artists for encouragement, focus and enjoyment. Today the group is still a tribe of artists from the South Downs area, with very varied practices, and is centred in Chichester. ARTEL continues to be lively, proactive and forward-looking, and Oxmarket Contemporary is delighted Artel are returning for its summer show.

The first strength of the exhibition is a unifying title and subject matter -What Lies Beneath. Each of the nineteen artists have forensically examined this subject, from their own point of view.

The flipside of this coin is the show’s second strength - the wide -ranging aspects that have come under the artists’ scrutiny. These include ideas of identity; ancestry; evoked memory through scent; experience and thought.

ARTEL invites the viewer to consider what is hidden. Beneath the earth, behind the mask, within our thoughts and memories, in the mists of time, or in an art work. All may not be what it seems.