Peoples + Brand is a funky little exhibition with attitude. It is characterised by witty and amusing pieces of art that can be worn as jewellery. Nellie Peoples and Zoe Brand are two young contemporary artists who have recently graduated from the ANU School of Art Gold and Silversmithing workshop. In a nice twist, Zoe Brand grew up in Brisbane but came to Canberra to study Gold and Silversmithing while Nellie Peoples is from Canberra but now has a studio in Brisbane.

Both artists have already been included in other group exhibitions but this exhibition of a solo body of work by each artist is the first one they have had together. They are both artists who are concept-driven – that is to say they are as interested in the ideas behind the works as the works themselves. Both artists have a need to communicate. Merely making the object is not enough – it has to be seen as a part of an ongoing narrative that connects the artist in a more personal and intimate relationship with the people who own the works.

Peoples is concerned with the interaction between the wearer of her jewellery and the object itself while Brand's use of text also involves an extra participant; namely the viewer or the reader of the text who is invited to take part in the dialogue that includes both the artist as maker, and the object. Both Peoples and Brand have demonstrated a high degree of technical and manual skill in the making of their objects. In the case of Brand, this has an added irony as in most cases she is making a permanent object that is based on advertising ephemera.

Nellie Peoples' collection of jewellery includes brooches, rings and pendants. Peoples has an affinity with jewellery that carries the marks of its wearer's life. In an earlier collection of rings (Souvenir series, 2014) Peoples asked participants to wear, over time, rings made of wax. These wax rings were then cast in metal to show the outward signs of the wear that appears on jewellery when worn continuously – scratches, abrasions, dents and even distortions of the shape of the ring that indicate the way rings, for instance, can be reshaped by our fingers. This idea has resurfaced albeit in a different guise in Peoples' rings in this exhibition (Make Your Mark series, 2016). Instead of wax prototypes, these present silver rings have a thick layer of crayon around them in bright colours of orange, black, blue and red. You can draw with these rings and as you draw, their appearance changes. When the crayon surface of the ring disappears (depending on your creativity), the artist will replace the crayon or you can enjoy the patterned sterling silver ring that is revealed.

Among Peoples' other work is a series of small shiny disks in silver and gold plated metal that can be worn as a single pin or in a group. These disks have been modified slightly with an up curled or under turned edge to enliven their surfaces. Called invitingly Take me with you ( 2016 these small sterling silver pins invite the participation of the wearer in deciding their location on the body. The casually elegant pendants from the Line in the sand (2016) series look like engineered machine components – their precise manufacture demonstrates the skill Peoples has in working in metal. They are very tactile and would, I imagine, encourage the wearer to play with them as if they were worry beads.

Zoe Brand's work uses text at its central core. She uses the slogans and mottos such as So What! and IT LOOKS BETTER ON that punctuate our daily life. Usually slogans are found on T-shirts or bumper bar stickers but Brand carries them into her jewellery where their meaning becomes ambiguous or at least open to reinterpretation. The concept for this exhibition is based on the screeds of slogans, colours and symbols we are automatically programmed to recognise from our daily exposure to consumerism. This is not a tight-lipped puritanical attack on consumerism – after all, the artist herself would see the irony of offering for sale the objects that are inscribed with her censure. I would see it rather as an amusing and witty comment on our willing participation in consumerism marked by our ready recognition of its prevailing visual signs and language.

The red dot, the badge with "Special" written on it, some price tags and the overarching refrain WANT, WANT, WANT ( 2016) become the building blocks of Brand's concept for this body of work. The red "sold" dot has been magnified into a pendant with a large red disk made from powder-coated enamel. Amusingly, while looking very contemporary, it reminded me of the large flat kina shell breastplates worn as decoration by both men and women in Papua New Guinea which no doubt are also indicative of encoded cultural messages. Price tags have been refashioned as brass, silver and white powder coated metal charms and fastened together by a silver pin, lauding the advertising hype of genuine, quality and brand – ironically making a very desirable wearable object. This applies also to the WANT pendants. They are made from white powder-coated disks impressed with the tag WANT and are strung as disks on a black cord – together they clunk reassuringly in a very substantial way like coins awaiting to be transformed into material goods. Other necklaces called Reduced – BULK BUY are more disposable being presented in multiples of ready-to-use packs of sales stickers and cord as a single-wear item.

Nellie Peoples and Zoe Brand are two young artists who impress with their fresh ideas and concepts. They ask their audience to participate in a new appraisal of contemporary art as jewellery or indeed contemporary jewellery as art.