YORK'S most persistent artist, Milladdio, is mounting a retrospective of his commissioned works at VJ's art bar, in Finkle Street, from this week.

On show in Milladdio vs Eboracum, Un Exhibition du Crayonirre Idiosyncratique, are a dozen figurative works, representing a cross section of people and businesses in York and places and faces from beyond.

Portraits of City of York Council leisure services officer Peter Boardman, Golden Slipper pub manager Andy McKay and York architect Tom Adams stand alongside iconic stars of screen and television, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and The A Team's Mr T.

Local locations such as Monk Bar and the Odeon cinema in Blossom Street hang side by side with the Pyramids and Venice.

Milladdio, the kitsch artist otherwise known as Andy Hinkles, completes the show with his latest commission, a painting for VJ's that depicts the owners flying biplanes over York.

Elsewhere in the city, the ubiquitous Milladdio has works hanging at the Slug and Lettuce in Back Swinegate; Tricksters Lane restaurant in Fossgate (a picture of the staff standing in a nocturnal Shambles in Dickensian attire); and in the window display of Pulse, the Colliergate clothes shop (featuring Becky Miller of Pulse landing on York in a UFO).

Milladdio and ROTA (the Return Of The Artist group) are working in tandem with Matt Aconley of Planet-Arts, the Slug and Lettuce and Kennedys Caf Bar to establish York's Latin Quarter as "an area of cultural development".

Under the banner of Art Houses of the Latin Quarter, abstract, figurative, kitsch and iconic imagery will be shown in a series of exhibitions in Stonegate, Back Swinegate, Davygate and Church Street.

Throughout June, Kennedys, in Little Stonegate, and the Slug and Lettuce are displaying work by York artists Adam Hart, Katy Street and Darrin Rooke.

The Slug also has pieces on view by two Zimbabwean artists, Kudakwashe Gavi and the late Udo Finnberg, who died ten years ago. Milladdio has restored a Finnberg triptych specially for the exhibition.

Updated: 10:52 Friday, June 06, 2003