Hindmarsh Prize 2017 - Annette Blair, Lisa Cahill, Alexandra Chambers, Scott Chaseling, Erin Conron, Brian Corr, Mel Douglas, Rose-Mary Faulkner, Hannah Gason, Jeremy Lepisto, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello, Catherine Newton, Peter Nilsson, Kirstie Rea, Tom Rowney, Harriet Schwarzrock, Yusuke Takemura, John White and Richard Whiteley.

Canberra Glassworks, Kingston. Until June 18, 2017.

The Hindmarsh Prize was instigated in 2016 following the last exhibition in 2014 of the prestigious Ranamok Glass Prize. While the Ranamok Prize was for Australian and New Zealand glass artists, the Hindmarsh Prize is at present only for glass artists who practise in the ACT and region. Although the 2017 Hindmarsh Prize exhibition is on at the Canberra Glassworks for only a short time, the idea was floated at the opening event by some speakers that there may be future opportunities for the Hindmarsh Prize exhibition to travel to other venues. Indeed, as the work of these short-listed finalists suggests, Australian glassmakers are displaying some of the most innovative techniques and concepts in contemporary glass and deserve a wide audience. Their works move beyond the traditional perceptions of glass into the more uncharted seas of contemporary glass practice.

Last year I was struck by the dramatic nature of some of the work selected for the prize in its emphasis on creating optical illusions of space and form. This year the work of the 19 selected artists seems more individual – and more idiosyncratic. I suppose the most singular of the works (commended by the judges) would have to be Peter Nilsson's glass sculpture of a woolly mammoth called What once was. When a small boy, Nilsson heard the story of a woolly mammoth being discovered in Siberia well preserved in the permafrost. Later he was able to see it in an exhibition. His work is not large (42x42 x22cm) but represents in minute and realistic detail the large shaggy animal encased in glass as if in its ice tomb. Nilsson's mastery of the engraving technique is formidable. The detail is truly astounding from the hair (clearly visible on the original animal) to the rendition of the crystallised ice. Whether you are an admirer of woolly mammoths or not, this is a magical showpiece for this kind of exhibition. The work underlines in its own way the unpalatable premise that eventually we may be looking at all our existing mammals represented like the woolly mammoth as a specimen under glass.

Scott Chaseling is the winner of the 2017 Hindmarsh Prize. His large installation work Adrift is also a work like that of Peter Nilsson – a source of magic and illusion. Its dome and tower-like glass structure standing on a mirrored base is made from sections of glass bottles joined together. It dominates the exhibition. Initially the structure appeared to me as an exotic eastern temple but in fact it is inspired by Chaseling's concept of a marine buoy adrift from its moorings and condemned to float without direction on an endless sea. To stand on the edge of the mirrored surface of the work and look into its interior space brings a feeling of disorientation and the sensation of plunging into a void.

Kirstie Rea (commended by the judges) has exhibited a stunning work called The gurgle in my gut that plays with the notion of the air that we ingest and the dialogue we have with our digestion. The coils and folds of the human intestine are more acceptably represented in this work by fluttering twirls of descending drapery. Rea currently is the subject of a very successful survey exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery.

Among other artists investigating the body is Catherine Newton. The artist conceives a body hug as a three dimensional object in her work Mum's hug 3588, 21290, 11098, 11505. In a process that mimics an actual hug and wearing an asbestos suit, she transforms the hot blown glass bubble into clear balloon-like forms moulded by her own body. Richard Whiteley's glass cube- like sculpture Push-Pull also deals with the spatial concept of our internal body in a dialogue between interlocking complex forms that play with opposites of positive and negative space and clear and translucent light.

In contrast the glass panels of Lisa Cahill's atmospheric nocturnal landscapes and Rose-Mary Faulkner's series of soft focus landscapes of the folds and mounds of the human form have painterly surfaces that suggest the artists have thought of the glass surface as a canvas.

Hannah Gason, who had such an accomplished glass panelled work in the last Hindmarsh Prize, is represented by a romantic work of thin swaying coloured glass rods suggestive of river grasses. Its display in the exhibition space is not ideal but provokes the viewer into imagining it in a more sympathetic context.

John White's work Between walls on the other hand looks just right in the structural context of the Fitters Workshop adjacent to the Canberra Glassworks where the exhibition is being staged. This sculptural construction of RSJ or l-beams and workbench with a suspended beam floating above harks back to the artist's experience of working in the construction industry. The beams conceal internal layers of mosaic glass patterns that hint at the secrets of craftsmanship that lie hidden beneath the walls of our architectural constructions.