Tom Wright

The Tetris theme tune has a lot to answer for, spawning many a terrible cover, from ska to drum & bass, with its chripy 8-bit sounds. Chiptune - the musical movement that hijacks your humble Gameboy or Nintendo - has returned to manipulate these melodic monotones.

Weird at first, and more than a little bit influenced by today's cult for the fake-spectacled urban-nerd, its concept of layering the minimal to create something more than the sum of its parts is not new in any art form. Substitute the A, B, start, select for dot and dash and our almost indefinitely complex language is reduced to its visual basics. This layering of meaning in typography and syntax is difficult to miss once investigated; it was the Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay who said, 'stupidity reduces language to words.' I bet he only wore glasses if he actually needed to.

Poor.Old.Tired.Horse refers to a zine published by Finlay, who is credited as the key proprietor of the Concrete Poetry movement in Britain. His zine was a vessel for much of the experimentation that was taking place in this country. If the exhibition is focused on Concrete Poetry and this, in turn, is a label for the fusion of art and literature then its organisers have been far too conservative in their pigeon-holing of the work. The most successful work here envelopes much more than purely literature but instead grapples with the likes of the page as a spatial construct or, as with Liliane Lijn, discards that surface altogether for a more dynamic involvement.

Chopin and Houédard present a pattern and depth so intrinsic in their compositions that it makes their medium all the more remarkable. On one level each piece pulsates with the rhythm and complexity at the heart of its creation and yet they equally seem to occupy a projecting or architectural plane or surface. These artists seem to be pushing literature to catch up with the technological advances that had been forged around them in the early 20th Century. What Rietveld or Mondrian were exploring in complexity through ultimate abstraction of architecture and painting, the early Concrete Poets were achieving with a typewriter. The scope and concepts visible here go far beyond just poetry left on a page.

This work is, undoubtedly, the peak of the exhibition. From here it descends quickly into the all too common pandering to the established mid-century avant-garde. Tired Hockney prints demonstrate a style done better and more frequently by almost every UAL Illustration graduate going. Room Three teeters on the edge of the irrelevant, feeling more like provincial art gallery padding than a leading art centre flashing its hidden best to support an evolution. This was sadly not the promised glimpse at some important thematic undergarments. Poor.Old.Tired.Knickers.

It could have got worse - and after such a promising start - the contemporary art scene's ability to turn a new perspective into a rehashed, retro obsession (your smug arty mate who found a typewriter and a cardigan in a thrift store) is all too common.

Thankfully, the collection of contemporary artists that round off this show are much too good for my cynical impugning. The work does not exercise a selective memory and attempt the aesthetic of the early movement. Amongst the best here are Holmqvist's installation and Stark's distorted adaptations, each questioning production and display in a complex collaboration of themes.

The exhibition is a refreshing exposure of a visual complexity that was fast becoming a bad graphic design stereotype. Put the Gameboy down, there's no Helvetica in sight.