WORKING separately, but exhibiting together, husband and wife artist and potter, Geoff and Jenny Morten, have a shared theme for their show in the Myles Meehan Gallery at Darlington Arts Centre (to March 16).

Scratching the Surface can be applied literally to the techniques each uses in entirely different ways, but the title also provides an insight into the subject matter.

Jenny Morten's elegant stoneware and porcelain ceramics are far removed from domestic pottery. Though the pieces are labelled as bowls and vases, these are only the loosest of categories for objects that are simply to be viewed, admired, displayed - and perhaps touched.

The tilting and twisting shapes of pieces large and small take their cue from forms found in nature. Encrusted outer surfaces of works such as the split form pictured above suggest weathered, lichen-covered rocks, and transcend their actual size to make one think of massive landscape features.

The surface effects of smaller pieces, usually displayed in pairs or groups, have references to mottled stone, shells or to sand etched by the marks of waves; stylised leaf and foliage shapes appear on other works.

Colour is important, inspired by nature's soft greens, creams and pinks, and is controlled with almost painterly care in all the structures, with the inside of each work generally expressing an alternative to the outside: smooth versus rough, stillness as opposed to motion.

From this objective response to the world outside, the spectator moves to Geoff Morten's small-scale semi-abstract paintings and etchings which are a much more subjective re-working of experience.

These similarly surpass their actual size, the paintings in particular being very densely worked, causing the eye to move from colours sometimes so strong they sing off the surface of the canvas to myriad depths and shadows beyond. In paintings and etchings, objects anchor the images in reality, but the mood is mysterious, always with a sense of exploring the unknown.

This is less disconcerting than it might seem because of the firm construction, usually a grid or arrangement of rectangular shapes, imposing an underlying, if barely perceptible, order.

A large number of the works were inspired by visits to Romania and reveal an interest in East meeting West, though not in confrontation, rather with the suggestion of joy at new dialogues and discoveries. P F.