IT'S obvious from the film that accompanies this exhibition, that these guys get on extremely well. Since 1991, architect Will Alsop and artist Bruce Mclean have been collaborating on a sequence of abstract paintings and constructions, mostly executed in Malagarba in Spain.

A selection of these works are currently on show at Cube and despite the misgivings of both men about the compression of an essentially open-ended project into a finite form, Two Chairs is an inspirational take on the hybridisation of the arts.

As Mclean candidly confesses, the two first met "in a bar" and from occasional visits to one anothers' studios, soon began to get together on a more regular basis. As Alsop recalls, "We would meet perhaps two evenings a week in the pub. Conversations were always geared towards coming up with something new we could do."

Eventually, these brainstorming sessions began to yield more than a hangover and their annual Spanish excursion represented an opportunity to kick ideas around that could conceivably feed into both men's solo work.

Freshness

Alsop frequently initiates a design through drawings and paintings and the resulting buildings possess a freshness and wit that proceeds directly from this improvisational spirit. His contribution to these images would seem to be chiefly architectonic although the marriage of sensuous colour and rectilinearity is an intimate one.

The core of the show is a set of gigantic pieces up to 40 feet in length and painted against a vast chipboard working wall that the pair humped overland and constructed themselves.

The various smaller works and computer manipulated text and photo collages that accompany the paintings bring this beautiful but difficult space to life in a profusion of ideas and forms that represent a startling new area of visual enquiry. As Mclean observes, "the whole idea of the artist as an atelier based loner is a nonsense."

Despite a lingering 'what we did on our holidays' feel, the works themselves, full of looping charcoal lines, odd perspectives and showering drips, take their place in a tradition extending back through the Bauhaus to William Morris and beyond.

Surely any kind of cross fertilisation between the arts is a good thing and the fragmentary texts that punctuate the display point up the freewheeling nature of their endeavour; "a never ending present of possibility".

A quick glance at Alsops' 'Fourth Grace' designs for Liverpool in the next gallery should convince anyone of the power of such a positive credo.

Will Alsop & Bruce Mclean: Two Chairs is at Cube Gallery until Thursday, May 8.

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