ART shows at the click of a button - that's the way it's going to go and we're just going to have to face up to it.

"Telling the public what we were putting on was a nightmare involving hundreds of news releases being sent out and half of them missing their target market" says Hannah Kelly, 25, arts curator at Llantarnam Grange arts centre at Cwmbran who has come up with a scheme for advertising art shows on Facebook. "It works wonders.

"Instead of having a couple of hundred on our books we now have 677 a lot of them from a younger audience we had difficulty reaching before.

"Older people still like to be told about forthcoming events in the traditional way but for the younger ones Facebook is a way of life.

"Not only can we get the details of our exhibitions to a wider public we also get feedback.

“Networking allows us to keep an eye on the wider arts world and find people who ordinarily might not have come to our attention."

One such a person is Bristol-based artist Alex Bertram-Powell whose exhibition Threshhold Consciousness is at Llantarnam Grange until the end of this month.

With images some of which will remind some people of Salvador Dali Bertram-Powell investigates themes that occur in dreams and nightmares.

Other drawings by the same artist are much more literal but with the elements displaced in a disturbing way.

A reasonably normal landscape for instance might have a large gap in the clouds through which, instead of sky, more scenery can be seen.

"This has proved to be very popular.

"Without Facebook Alex might never have been brought to our attention" Hannah, who set up the scheme after gaining her post-graduate diploma in arts marketing, said.

Llantarnam Grange director Hywel Pontin said "Facebook is a marvellous tool which has reached the parts other media can't reach but it's not intended as a substitute for the real thing.

"Even I can work it. All you have to do is get on Facebook and tap in 'Llantarnam Grange'.

"But nothing compares with directly confronting the artist's work.

"Anything else is like trying to watch a full-scale production of the Welsh National Opera's Carmen on a DVD."