Canberra glass artist Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello says one of the things her new solo exhibition, Ecology, Tradition, Art, does is illustrate the point that Indigenous people have had a longstanding sustainable relationship with the environment.

"The inspiration is traditional woven objects - eel traps, fish traps, fish baits, dilly bags."

The original objects were made from various plants Martiniello has based the colours of her artworks on the hues and shades of the bullrushes and other flora used in their creation.

"The objects that are woven come from the environment and when they've been used and are worn out they return to the environment," she says.

Martiniello's recreations of the objects are created in glass which, as she points out, "is also made from the environment" and the other element that is crucial to the exhibition, she says, is light, "because light refracts colours so beautifully".

There are 16 individual glass works in the exhibition and a set five message sticks. Martiniello says she's been working on the intricately crafted pieces for the best part of a year, both in Canberra and in Darwin.

Ecology, Tradition, Art, which will open as part of NAIDOC Week, is Martiniello's second solo show at Tuggeranong Arts Centre where she has exhibited for many years as part of ITAG, the Indigenous Textile and Glass Artists. It will be opened by the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Rachel Stephen Smith, on Thursday, July 6 at 6.30pm.

Martiniello, 67, has lived in Canberra for nearly half a century but grew up in Adelaide in Southern Arrernte country and joined the navy in her late teens, having grown up in a family where military service was a tradition. She married and started a family but, as she says, "You don't know what your path in life is going to be" and hers has encompassed teaching and writing as well as graduating from the Canberra School of Art in 1985 with a major in sculpture.

She has worked in painting and photography and, starting 10 years ago, glass and her exhibitions have included Open Work in 2012 featuring glass made with the Venetian technique of canework, GlassWeave in 2013 featuring glass objects based on the forms of fish traps and baskets woven by Indigenous people and Reinventing the Weave in 2015.

In 2013 Martiniello won the 30th Telstra Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art Award with her work Golden Brown Reeds Fish Trap. In the same year, she won a $90,000 fellowship at the National Indigenous Art Awards.

Martiniello says with glassmaking she is "appropriating a medium from a dominant culture and using it for a mode of expression for a culture that's many times older."

She says she approaches glass making as a vehicle for continuing her Indigenous cultural expression. "Message sticks were traditionally given as an invitation to trade or as a mark of safe passage and these traditional methods of communication inform this part of my work."

Exhibiting alongside Martiniello are emerging artists Karen Lee, whose paintings explore the native fauna and flora around her home in the lower Blue Mountains region paintings in Veils: An Exploration of Landscape, and Kayannie Denigan, whose My Country: Ngathu Bubu combines the dots of her Luritja heritage with the colours and stories of her upbringing in Cape York.