Craft / Bridges – Ngaio Fitzpatrick,  Peter Nilsson, NOT, Luna Ryan. At Humble House, Fyshwick, until December 24. Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

With the closure of several commercial galleries recently, artists are seeking different venues to show their work.

The artists in Bridges have shown this exhibition in two venues, and this is the last. It is a large show and the movement between venues would have been quite a bit of work.

Luna Ryan’s work is often enigmatic, and there are several pieces which might need some decoding. However, she also creates cast animals and including wombats – adults and joeys. Ryan’s work is cast Blackwood glass : Australian-made coloured lead crystal glass. Ryan also uses discarded TV screens.

Ryan is showing a range of objects in this exhibition – they are playful and quirky. Small tugboats – perhaps cast from a wooden toy, one stranded on a pole. There are several Critters,  small figures that are displayed on a rotating mirror turntable, one poised on a wooden toy scooter. And small objects she has titled Swirlies. This artist has worked with several indigenous artists, and it is heartening to see her own work.

Peter Nilsson trained and worked in Sweden as a glass engraver, and moved to Australia in 2010. He is exhibiting a number of works in hand-blown, engraved glass using the Graal technique. This technique was developed by Orrefors – close to where Nilsson lived – where a carving is made on a small, unformed coloured glass object – and then reheated, encased in a thick outer layer of transparent glass of a different colour, and inflated.

He is also showing several Knaar, slumped, cold-sculpted from recycled TV screen and resting on a cradle of Tasmanian oak. These were boats used by Vikings for long sea voyages, as both warships and as work boats for handling cargo. The prows and sterns of these boats rise upwards and they have low, wide hulls.

NOT – his exhibiting name, is a glass artist who works with both clay and glass – particularly uranium glass. Several works in this show are in cast glass, and a few in bronze. Terracotta Worriers is a group of 49 figures that play on the terracotta warriors from China. The base material is mostly terracotta, with its traditional orange colour, although there are some flashes of grey porcelain, suggesting he is reusing discarded clay. One very dark blue cast glass figure sits amongst the terracotta.

Ngaio Fitzpatrick is showing a series of bowls – large, medium and small in solid kiln cast, cold-worked recycled TV screen glass.

There is little holding this exhibition together, but each individual artist is showing solid bodies of work, using glass in a way which some viewers may not have seen. They are experienced artists, and we see a range of objects – many in cast glass.