A vast array of unusual artistic gems is on display in an old school house on the Greek island of Hydra—an exhibition space that is itself something of a hidden gem. Curator Dimitrios Antonitsis, the founder of the Hydra School Projects — as the annual showcase for Greek and international artists is called — has titled the exhibition “Bibelot,” a term used in both English and French to denote “cherished trinket.”

Among the highlights are a trio of paintings by Vassiliki Pikoula, an unschooled Greek cook who taught herself to paint charming, childlike pictures of islanders and animals. Pikoula was “discovered” by the American-born, Paris-based art dealer Darthea Speyer, who hired her in the late 1960s as a personal chef at her vacation home in Hydra. Soon Speyer began showing Pikoula’s work at her Paris gallery, and one of her other artists, Beauford Delaney, painted Pikoula’s portrait. “These three works were Darthea’s favorites and were given to me by the new owner of Darthea’s house, who could not stand them,” Antonitsis says.

Elsewhere in the show is one of Damien Hirst’s assemblages from 1985 — the series he used to apply to graduate school at Goldsmiths, which he attended the following year. Hirst, whose class would soon become known as the YBAs, reportedly sourced the objects he used in these works from a neighbor who ran a junk store out of his house. For the piece on view here, which is surprisingly sentimental for the artist, he affixed a doorstop, a doll’s arm, a seashell, and a copy of Alice Perrin’s book “A Free Solitude” to a wooden frame.

Visitors will also find a resin ashtray made by the late German artist and chain smoker Martin Kippenberger — “It’s a true bibelot with a utilitarian aspect,” Antonitsis says — and Lola Montes Schnabel’s series of worn, diary-like books. As Schnabel writes in an artist statement, they are “a comment on photography and the way my early journals which had polaroid and photos I used to print in the dark room from teen hood turned into an Instagram account on my iphone.” She goes on to note that today those old printing processes she loved “have all become obsolete. We are left with these damn camera phones beating the shit out of human perception and dictating how to see!”

“Bibelot” runs through September 25.