Peter Miko works in glass. Most of the work you see at the North Wall is not entirely typical, however. Generally, glass working is associated with celebrating the material’s natural qualities in some sense, the innately beautiful drama of its translucency, the reflections and meditations it sets up, and such like. Miko, Slovakia born, now living in Oxford and working in London at the Adam Aaronson Glass Studio, Earls Court, uses the small broken pieces of glass you find in any glass studio, the throwaway pieces, and makes something completely different from them. His are works that border on painting: glass reliefs constructed on plates of glass or canvas, using scraps of glass, poured molten glass, silicone and spray paint that look as though they are made without control. Whereas each is thought through and progress can be slow, says Miko. Working like this “makes me feel very free. It’s the same kind of expression as Jackson Pollock, but it’s not copying him”.

The title, Ugly Glass and other things, pays homage to Vladimir Kopecký, a professor of glassmaking in Prague who in the 1960s coined the term ‘ugly glass’. He maintained that glass could be used in unorthodox ways that obscure its more attractive qualities. This freed up expression.

To Miko, his artworks express elements of construction and destruction, of law and lawlessness, as well as freedom. Opposing forces suggest a certain conflict. Perhaps this comes from an approach that combines discipline and economy with explosive expressiveness?

The titles are personal, though Miko was unable to explain them. It struck me that although they are emotive and the works dramatic — called things like Desperate Talk, or Thirst, Emptiness (see above) Unrest, Maybe, No Hope and Crows Arrived (these both strong compositions, I felt) — he is not trying to tell people what to think; rather he wants them to react to his work in their own way, positively or negatively, as one would to a poem.

Some minimalist pencil sketches and hand-blown glass objects are also on show. I particularly liked the four sculptures that reminded me of Arum lilies and Cuckoo pint leaves, or perhaps imaginary underwater plants.

The exhibition continues until January 28. The North Wall is in South Parade, Summertown.