HE’S CALLED Harvey and he’s got his softer side, despite the look of his alien head and bleeding heart.

Brought into this world by fine art student Alex Douglas, Frankenstein’s monster sits on a pure white duvet surrounded by teddy bears that would be more at home in a baby’s cot.

Alex began by making a cast of a pig’s heart in latex and then pouring resin into the mould. However, the ‘plumbing’ surrounding it was a happy find.

“I went for a walk when Corbridge was last flooded and found all sorts of stuff dumped there,” he said.

“It included two or three massive metal boxes that looked like old computers someone had taken the opportunity to get rid of for free, so I took the leads out of those ... “

Welcome to the latest annual exhibition of A-level art mounted by Hexham’s Queen Elizabeth High School.

Trust me, Galleries One and Two in the Queen’s Hall are well worth a visit, and Harvey is a natural starting point for the exploration of the theme You Can’t Define Normal.

“It looks quite mechanical and quite macabre, not human,” said Alex.

“But I still wanted it to have a sense of vulnerability and morality and dependency, so I’ve put it against something quite comfortable.

“I also wanted to build in the contrasts of black and white, soft and hard, robotic and childlike, approachable and friendly with the overtones of a horror film.”

Half of the 30 or so students who have work in the exhibition completed their A-levels last summer and have moved on to the next stage of their lives.

Alex, for example, is just putting the finishing touches to his foundation course in fine art at Newcastle College before heading off to Bournemouth University of Art in the autumn. There, he will study visual effects, design and film production.

By way of contrast, Elliott Bevan has made a right-hand turn, towards a geography degree at Newcastle University. He still enjoys photography as a hobby though.

His exhibition piece was inspired by the work of ‘Prince’ Hubertus Von Hohenlohe, an eccentric if ever there was one.

Descended from the royal family of a German principality that hasn’t existed for over 200 years, Hohenlohe has said in interviews that his family went from their native Austria to Mexico for his birth, because they’d always wanted a Mexican in the family.

So it is that the man who otherwise has a pop career in Europe under the name of Andy Himalaya also became Mexico’s Eddie the Eagle.

The slalom skier has been the country’s sole representative at the Winter Olympics since 1984, he became the second-oldest winter Olympian in history at the 2014 games and has never had a sniff of a medal. Oh, and he’s also a photographer.

Elliott’s own imagination began to whir when he looked at Hohenlohe’s pictures – all of himself – for his 2005 exhibition It’s Me!

“I’m in each image in my piece too,” said Elliott. “But the pictures are on sheets of glass, which are free to move and reflect the light.

“The original idea was to embellish photography with light.”

Caitlin Bell, in turn, drew inspiration from Agnes Cecile and the duality of her portraits. Caitlin’s two images of the same person are differentiated by colour and media – one is in black pencil and the other in watercolours.

“I researched quite a few artists from all over the world, but Agnes was the one who had the most impact on me, because she had two parts to her paintings – the more upbeat and the more melancholy,” said Caitlin.

She laughed, “That doesn’t show so much in my piece because they both look miserable, but the watercolour does throw the pencil into relief.

“I wanted to reflect the fact that not everything is simple to define, that there are shades of meaning and definition all around us.”

Currently taking a year out, Caitlin is off to Nottingham Trent University in the autumn to study German linguistics.

Upstairs, in Gallery Two of the Queen’s Hall, a film reflecting the students’ work rolls.

A swathe of pictures was inspired by a trip to Paris last year that turned out to be as productive as art teacher Will Pym had hoped.

“The idea was to give them a chance to really experience the cultural life of a city and to produce art work as a result,” he said.

“There is so much in Paris, of course, from the National Museum of Modern Art to the European House of Photography, that they got to experience a wide range of art forms.”

Morgan Wymes-Arthur, for one, made the most of the trip. Interested in film production, he says his photography is “accidental, unplanned”. He doesn’t do photo-shoots as such, rather he captures his images on the move.

One is of a girl as she walks past a fluorescent sign at night; another would be a traditional portrait of a boy sat in an armchair if he wasn’t shaking his head – his face is a blur.

“I like looking at things from a different perspective, such as from a rooftop or a bridge,” said Morgan.

“In the street, I’ve started to see things differently now – I see things as potential photographs rather than just a street scene.”

Amos Menin, meanwhile, knows just where his future lies. He already has his own ‘Amos Menin Photography’ site on Facebook, has produced film shorts for YouTube and is doing a roaring line in photographs for the North-East Ferrari Owners’ Club.

“I’m looking at film-making courses at university,” he said. “I’ve been working in photography for five or six years now and I think the two subjects, film and photography, go hand in hand.

“With photography, when you have been doing it for a while, it’s amazing how you see the world differently. I’m constantly looking round, thinking ‘that would make a great photograph’ and I pretty much always carry a camera in some form.”

You Can’t Define Normal will run at the Queen’s Hall until July 1.