Reviewer: Sasha Grishin.

Megan Hinton, possibly better known to Canberra audiences as Megan Jackson the textile designer, works in a style that stems out of Russian Constructivism.

Constructivism emerged from various sources and for a short time became the official style of the Bolshevik revolution associated with such names as Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova. It subsequently attracted recruits in Western Europe with artists associated with the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements and from there spread around the world, even as far as Australia.

Constructivism was conceived as a "constructed art" that drew on the materials of life, rather than abstracted functionless aesthetic objects. Constructivism was also applied to every facet of life, including architecture, theatre design, graphic design, textiles and fashion as well as photography, film, dance and music.

Hinton writes of her exhibition that she, "takes inspiration from our built environment, carefully dissecting each segment, line and shape to create newly constructed compositions of repurposed architectural forms". Her designs have generally clean edges and geometric flat blocks of colour arranged with a deceptive simplicity.

Her etchings, such as United Constructs I (2018), are more adventurous than her screenprints with their surfaces more tentative and personalised. There is a tension created between the textures with their subtle markings and the somewhat austere geometric forms that house them. The structured play in the spatial constructs at times becomes conceptually too complex to be completely resolved within the etching – a medium that has the propensity to bring out the personality of the artist, rather than objectify the design.

The screenprints are the most successful part of the exhibition with strong flat blocks of colour and sharp and dramatic transitions between the structured planes. Some of the strongest pieces are Assemblage Series VIII (2018) and Assemblage Series I (2018). The work speaks of a built-up urban environment, which is treated with sympathy and a degree of enthusiasm.

Canberra, as with so many Australian cities, is witnessing a transition from owner-occupier cottages arranged on separate blocks of land to apartments in blocks of flats with shared spaces. Constructivists a century ago praised urbanisation and viewed progress in terms of establishing intelligent cities that would have their own art forms and constructed spaces. For this lifestyle, it seemed no longer adequate to employ the language of academic realism and imagery of rural nostalgia.

The constructed form was seen as the future and it demanded the creation of a new functional art to inspire those who will live in the new urban utopia. Hinton, a century later, echoes in her prints many of these sentiments and creates bold, harmonious designs for urban living.