IT is 43 years since Bishop’s Castle held its Charter Celebrations and people were there on that July day in 1973 and visited the Town Hall would have seen an exhibition of Robert Bates’s small water colours hanging from the coat hooks.

Times change and four decades on he is back with his recent work.

The coat hooks are long gone as Bishop’s Castle Town Hall has undergone major renovations and it now houses a purpose-built gallery that hosts a regular series of exhibitions and shows throughout the year.

Robert Bates was born in Wolverhampton. He studied fine art in Birmingham and at the Royal College of Art in London.

Since leaving he has exhibited regularly, most frequently in London with twelve one-man shows at the Lumley Cazalet Gallery. In the United States there have been one-man shows at the Hom Gallery, Washington DC and Chivian-Cobb, New York. In Ireland there have been one-man shows at the National Gallery of Ireland, Wellspring Gallery, Tralee and The Molesworth Gallery in Dublin, which currently holds his work.

His most recent exhibition was in June at the Silk Top Hat Gallery in Ludlow where they also showed “In the Making” a film made for BBC television about his work as a miniaturist.

His work features in the collections of The British Museum, The National Trust Foundation for Art, The Arts Council of Great Britain, The British Council, The National Gallery of Victoria, The South London Art Gallery, The McNay Institute, Texas and Dept. Foreign Affairs Dublin as well as private collections internationally.

Robert left Bishop’s Castle in 1985 and lived in Ireland for 21 years before returning to live in Shropshire.

The exhibition in Bishops Castle runs until Saturday, December 12.