OLD art for new is the theme of Reclaim!, the thoroughly restorative exhibition at the New School House Gallery, off Peasholme Green, York.

This selling show explores myriad ways that recycling informs contemporary craft and art, asking the question: How do artists and makers reclaim materials and ideas?

On show are contemporary ceramics by Robert Cooper and Virginia Graham; mixed-media work by Serena Partridge and Jennifer Collier; origami by Yasuyo Cooper; wood and stone carving by Peter Coates and Nick Barberton; photography by Yan Preston; and jewellery by Gina Cowen, Syann van Niftrik, Suzi Tibbetts and Emma Gale.

“One of the delights of Reclaim! is the wide variety of materials that artists are re-working: paper, glass, stone, wood, even plastic toys and other found objects,” says Paula Jackson, the gallery’s co-director.

“But there are also other things being reclaimed, such as the Victorian patterns that Virginia Graham re-uses on her pots; or the house in Yan Preston’s photograph that the land is reclaiming from the reservoir; or sculptor Peter Coates’s Yat gate, made from reclaimed oak.”

The sound of recorded bird song will draw gallery visitors into the adjoining studio, where Eve Bennett is exhibiting her installation of porcelain birds entitled A Bird In The Hand, The Making Of Me. “These dead birds are sad but absurd and tragicomic, in the way that Samuel Beckett’s plays are, and it’s good to have something that stirs up a reaction,” says co-director Robert Teed.

“Some people are spooked by them, some may recall doing something similar to birds, or maybe not quite as bad…maybe leaving the gas on accidentally or leaving an aviary door open and the cat getting in to kill all the birds.”

The porcelain birds are upside down or on their side, to signify their dead state. “But I like the way Eve gives the birds beauty in death with a very beautiful watercolourist’s touch,” says Robert.

Nevertheless, viewers may need to apply the same dark sense of humour that Eve Bennett brought to her artwork. When Robert was asked by one visitor what the bird song signified, he suggested it was the sound of the birds’ souls. Beckett and Bennett would have loved that, but not alas the questioner.

Reclaim! will run until May 22.