Craft / Precarious Proximity, Honouring Country. At Craft + Design Canberra until July 26. Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

Craft + Design Canberra is currently showing two group exhibitions.

The first, as you enter the gallery, is Honouring Country. Seven female artists, all of whom have a connection with Canberra, worked with Biripi jeweller Wayne Simons to develop their skills and create wearable artworks inspired by Country (Biripi country is located on the mid-north coast of NSW). The two workshops were held in the old metalwork workshops of the ANU School of Art and Design.

Most of the participants have drawn on natural forms such as banksia and eucalypts. The jewellery is all fairly simple – cuffs, pendants and earrings. Perhaps the most experienced, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello has incorporated EPNS wedding gift cake forks – from her parents’ wedding. She made Father Daughter heritage rings to mark her son’s eldest daughter’s graduation from university. Cake forks are rarely used these days, and I can’t think of a better way to connect the three generations. She is also showing cuffs and pendants.

Judith Nangala Crispin is showing a pendant made from red Ininti seeds set in sterling silver, with details in shibuichi a traditional Japanese copper-silver alloy which adds colour. The tiny circular details are juxtaposed with a pod-shaped pendant and polished seeds.

Krystal Hurst is also a more experienced jeweller, and is exhibiting a Butjin bag necklace in brass and copper. The basket evokes the look of a woven dilly bag. This artist is studying contemporary indigenous Australian art at Griffith university.

In the second exhibition, Precarious Proximity, three artists are exhibiting works which combine glass and ceramics. These contrasting materials share transformative processes under heat, but differ in the technical processes. Heat causes adversity for the planet, and each artist explores the relationship between humanity and the environment.

Jo Victoria is inspired by the interaction of light and shadow and is showing three pendant lights. Her work Falling Light incorporates optic fibres giving tiny spots of light that seem to flutter in the movement of audiences as they pass. Small glass droplets hover in the tangled optic fibres.

Robyn Campbell has worked in both media, and combines fine, circular sculptural porcelain strips like leaves or bark, with glass forms sitting in the centre. Several “leaves” of textured porcelain are combined, and the cast glass forms centre the work.

Julie Bartholomew is concerned about glaciers melting in the heat. She is showing the ice melt in forms that combine glass and glazed ceramic.

These two materials do not lend themselves to being combined, and while the works in this exhibition are being displayed, I feel none is fully resolved.