IN his 80th year, Yorkshire artist Malcolm Whitaker is exhibiting in the Past To Present show at the Lund Gallery, near Easingwold, from today.

Alongside his paintings will be the innovative work of Austrian ceramicist Regina Heinz, winner of the Queensberry Hunt prize at Ceramic Art 2006 at the Royal College of Art, London.

"There are few opportunities to see major shows of work by Malcolm Whittaker outside of London, " says gallery owner Debbie Loane. "Add the opportunity to view ceramics by Regina Heinz, and it's definitely worth a visit."

Whittaker, born in Hoyland, South Yorkshire in 1937, studied at Barnsley School of Art and at the Royal College of Art and lectured in the fine art department at Sheffield Polytechnic until April 1989.

His influences are many and varied, cerebral and visual: land surfaces, archaeology, geology, museums, and maps. The resulting pieces are thoughtful, poetic, revealing fragments of history and often resembling artefacts uncovered from a museum archive.

"My aim is to stimulate in the spectator the kind of possibility of which he never thought himself capable, " he says. "As art is an individual experience and not objective as science is, my aim is fulfilled if I can stir the mind to a creative way of thinking."

Heinz constructs box-like forms from flat slabs of clay, and her work is featured in the ceramics collection at the new MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art).

"I usually take my inspiration from landscape and the surface details found in the natural and man-made environment to create pieces that are abstract but display an organic and sensual quality, " she says.

Contemporary ceramics by Carolyn Genders will be on show too during the exhibition. A practising potter for more than 20 years and a Fellow of the Crafts Potters Association, she produces strikingly decorated burnished ceramics from her studio in East Sussex.

Living in the country, she is inspired by the changing seasons' impact on the landscape.

"I work intuitively on forms developed from organic sources, " she says.

"Responding to the material, enjoying the rhythm as I move around the form, I make marks of depth and variation, scratching and scraping through layers of slip; the silky surface emerging as polished as a seaworn pebble."

Past To Present runs from this weekend to November 11. The Lund Gallery is open from Thursday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm, Sundays, noon to 4pm, and at other times by appointment on 01347 824400.