Art review: The Distant Warriors at Canberra Glassworks

There have been many events this year to commemorate the centenary of Anzac and the Gallipoli campaign. I wonder if any of them are quite like this exhibition by Australian Indigenous artists and Maori artists from New Zealand that honours with such heartfelt emotion, the Indigenous men from both countries who served in World War I. The artists in the exhibition – Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, Lyndy Delian, Joyce Graham, Alison Hoolihan, Hayley Hoolihan, Lyn Talbot, Jenny Dries and Treahna Hamm – are joined by Maori weavers Ruth Port and Mandy Sunlight.

In Australia, Indigenous men were not officially allowed to take up arms in the Australian Armed Forces. However it is thought that more than 500 men served in World War I. The actual numbers are uncertain because some Indigenous men hid their identity when they signed up and others joined later in the war when recruiting officers, desperate for men to fight, turned a blind eye. Once in the army, Indigenous personnel had the same pay and privileges as the rest of the army but they returned home to lack of acknowledgment of their war service and to the same discrimination they had suffered before. Maori were also present at Gallipoli although their actual numbers are hard to verify. Maori were in the regular New Zealand armed forces; some fought with Australian and British regiments and others in the Maori Pioneer Battalion. It was a different case in New Zealand as Maori were actually conscripted in 1917 although some Maori refused to fight in what they saw as a white man's war.

The exhibition is really too big in scope for the available space. There are so many works and so many stories by so many voices vying for attention that the effect is rather overwhelming. However there are three works – the cloaks in the Smokestack space, the collection of glass memorial poles and the series of women's hands moulded in glass that do provide a dramatic focus around which the rest of the exhibition revolves.

The two cloaks that are so dramatically and effectively displayed in the Smokestack space both commemorate the Fallen Warrior. Jenni Kemarre Martiniello's cloak We will remember them: cloak for the fallen is made from possum fur. In colder climates of Australia, possum fur was used to line a babies' coolamon or basket. The fur was added to make a cloak as the child grew older until it finally became over time, big enough to be used as a funeral shroud. Martiniello has added long glass tags like medal ribbons to the fur with the names of Aboriginal soldiers who fought in battle.

Maori artists Ruth Port and Mandy Sunlight's cloak entitled Kahukura Ariki is woven from dyed flax. Maori wore many different versions of cloaks but this cloak is in the traditional kahu toa warrior style. The two works are encircled by several pairs of cupped hands by Hoolihan, Delian, Graham, Talbot and Kemarre Martiniello. Modelled and cast from the hands of the artists themselves, they form a protective shield of love around the two warrior memorial cloaks.

The series of striking glass sculptures – the dramatic focus of the exhibition by Delian, Martiniello, Hoolihan, Talbot and Graham – are in the style of Indigenous totem and burial poles. They are engraved and enamelled with images relating to human scarring as well as the scarring of the land during war. Delian's smaller version of these poles, Impact 1-3 ,in clear glass is also worthy of note. The patterns of shields and other markings are beautifully realised and they work effectively both as a design and commemoration.

Among the other exhibits by Kemarre Martiniello in collaboration with other artists is a First Aid Box with two handles and a cane insert woven by both Maori and Australian Indigenous artists celebrating the co-operation between our two nations during war. It echoes the concepts and imagery of the weaving patterns carved on the New Zealand War Memorial on ANZAC Parade. The First Aid Box refers to the service that Indigenous people did as nursing orderlies during the war and the two known Aboriginal women who served as nurses during the conflict.

Among the many other works that are worthy of note are Graham's work Barran consisting of three cast glass boomerangs incised with Aboriginal words and markings; Talbot's series of six small shields cast in dark coloured glass and Delian's work called Gathering, a collection of cast glass forms that seems to be emblematic of mourners gathered together – not unlike this group of artists – to mourn and celebrate the dead.