The glass dome was a popular decorative feature of the Victorian parlour. All kinds of objects such as items of the taxidermist's art, butterflies, shells and paper flowers were captured under the glass dome. Moss, ferns and rocks were also arranged to create miniature landscapes.

The use of the glass dome also had a quasi-scientific appeal in an age when people were very interested in the scientific study of nature. The dome encased but also focused attention on the world of nature captured within the glass. Holly Grace's earlier work in her landscape series (Beaver Galleries 2010) created a contemporary version of the glass dome where her images of the landscape seemed to be contained within the glass like preserved fragments of memory caught in time.

In this latest collection of work Grave's previous readable images of nature such as mountains, vegetation and trees have become more abstracted - the larger vista being minimised into a micro world of details of texture and pattern. Grace has always regarded her photographic images as an integral part of her art practice. In recent years however she has begun photographing with a macro lens.

In her album that accompanies the exhibition there are two main groups of photographs – those of the larger landscape of mountain areas of Victoria and the more intimate close-up photographs of the texture of rocks and bark. Both viewpoints play an important part in her current works.

A recent residency at the Pilchuck Glass School in the United States also caused her to reflect on the relationship between landscape, imagination and memory in her glass practice.

In September this year Grace was awarded a six-week Thomas Foundation Residency at the Canberra Glassworks. During this period she was able to work with a team of glass artists who acted as her gaffers and assistants in producing the glass forms for this exhibition.

Grace was able to take the time to explore cold working glass with a collection of glass grinding tools that came with the lathe she acquired in Austria. With the development of her cold working skills, Grace's glass has become more complex in its surface treatment and her landscapes have become more abstracted in their patterns.

Grace's glass forms are made up of two parts - there is a central inner core of glass which remains at the heart of the vessel. A second layer of glass is cupped around it and is peeled back to reveal large areas of the original glass surface. However it is the upper layer of glass that the artist engraves to make her intricate textural surfaces.

Grace regards this exhibition as charting the research and processes she undertook during the Glassworks residency. The series of Sketches 1-V1 and the Studies 1-V1 are exemplars of the artist's exploration of the transfer of patterns onto glass and engraving them. Some of the works, such as the glass cylinders (Sketch 11 No.10), are delicate clear glass vessels with patterns like ice crystals around them. The large, clear globular vessel (Sketch V1 No. 9), with its tiny opening, is especially successful and its shadow casts a delicate lace-like pattern reminiscent of a perforated doley.

Other smaller glass globes proved to be a sympathetic surface for Grace's exploration of colour and texture using glass powders, metal leaf and glass paint. Of this group Study V No. 20 has a remarkable surface with beautiful passages of iridescent colours and textures.

The Veil is among the larger works and relates more to Grace's former landscape series of overlapping glass panels than any comparable works in this exhibition. Its longitudinal form is constructed of two panels of glass. The simple construction reveals the concept behind the artist's use of two layers of glass in her more complex forms. The rear panel has a band of heavily textured and coloured glass that appears to float behind the first panel. The surface of the first panel is corrugated like a wave which brings movement and surface interest to the textured panel behind, so that it appears to be moving like the marks made in the sand by the wind.

The Imagined Landscape series brings colour into the glass itself. The artist wanted to achieve the effect of translucent watercolour washes of colour. There are three large works Imagined Landscapes 1/11/ V1 which are based on squat bottle-like forms. Although the deep richness of their colours and their textures are beautiful, I found their forms were rather static and heavy.

In contrast where form and decoration seem to be most in harmony is in the elegant Imagined Landscape No. 111, No. 3. This is an amber coloured glass bowl with its form etched with a delicate filigree pattern. The pattern swells unevenly around its sides so that it appears as mountains arising above the horizon. Although its pattern obviously owes its origin to Grace's photographs of the texture of bark, it also has a connection with her photographs of the landscape around Batty Spur and Disappointment Ridge in Victoria.

In these photographs the dark foreground scrub is silhouetted against the mountain ranges that rise in the distance. In her interpretation in glass of this photographic image, the band of etched textural marks around the lower part of the vessel reproduces this dark silhouette which is in contrast with the upper more translucent section.

Holly Grace has always brought a poetic sensibility to her work and that poetic sensibility remains even though her images have become more abstract. In addition the glass surfaces of the artist's vessels have attained more textural significance as a result of the skills Grace has been able to acquire in her latest productive residency at the Canberra Glassworks.