Beauty in the everyday, the sublime overlooked, unseen or discarded are the threads which link the work of three artists who are exhibiting together for the first time, in a show that is at least 20 years in the making.

While the works of Tiffanie Brown, Peter Ranyard and Peter Rohen are recent, their relationships stretch over two decades, along with their intention to one day show their work together.

Brown and Ranyard are married and they have been friends with Rohen, now living in Melbourne, throughout that time, all three previously collaborating on commercial projects.

The exhibition, Beneath the Surface, finally allows them to show together their creative side.

Brown's watercolours, Ranyard's photographs and Rohen's etchings are on exhibition at the M16 Art Space in Griffith until April 13.

The exhibition questions the material world, the importance of the object, all presented in a pared-back, distilled kind of way.

Ranyard, the head of arts at Narrabundah College, has photographs in the exhibition from 10 countries, many showing aged or discarded items, such as a statue in an overgrown garden in Germany or a rusted Dodge car in California.

''It creates this other idea of beauty. The object is no longer used for whatever it was, sometimes it's just shoved over there because they don't know what to do with it, and yet it has this resonance,'' he said.

Rohen's etchings, by contrast, are closer to home.

''Ninety per cent of my stuff is within a 20-metre radius of my house,'' he said, with a laugh.

His etchings are in part a meditation on the significance of Monterey pines originally planted in Melbourne under the direction of Canberra designers Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin.

''There's old trees still dotted around the suburb which Walter Burley Griffin and his wife imported from California and all the developers are doing is ripping them out to build these big mansions. And no one has got a damned clue that these are not ordinary plantation pines,'' he said.

''They look at it and they pass it by, they don't give it a second glance.''

Brown, whose murals can been seen around Canberra including in the Tongue and Groove nightspot, has painted exquisite watercolours showing succulents and other plants plucked from her Campbell garden and placed in random vessels or unusual seeds and plants that friends have saved for her, knowing they would make a good painting.

''My work is a coupling of my fascination with the natural world and my love of handmade things,'' she said.

And all three enjoy the beauty they find in imperfection, in the quirks.

‘‘There’s a lot of chocolate-box stuff [in commercial galleries] where things are overly idealised whereas all this stuff is brutally realistic,’’ Mr Rohen said.