The two exhibitions currently at Form examine our world in distinctly individual visual languages. Each is clear and forcefully expressed and speaks of the depth of the artist’s aesthetic and conceptual approach to her subject and to her means of delivering that subject.

Alison Mackay’s GLASS works continues her contemplative reverie on the still life. Here, as the title suggests, the inclusion of glass objects offers further layers to her thematic explorations. The exhibition is full (28 works) and the eccentric massed hang is visually very effective, particularly along the back wall where 16 works are grouped together. The massing and indeed the overall number of pieces in the (relatively) small gallery space could be overwhelming. Mackay does not allow this to happen. Individual works are not lost but are imbued with a quietly assertive identity that is neatly underscored by the multiple image sizes incorporated into this joyous corpus.

For Mackay the still life is a celebration of the quotidian, the familiar objects and things that surround us in our everyday lives. That said some of the ways she combines objects has an element of the surreal which adds humour and whimsy. This is particularly evident in works such as Mackerel in a jar, Knife with latchet and Scad, weed and scissors.

Most works reference historical progenitors including Dutch and Flemish masters of the 17th century but also, and perhaps more familiarly, the example of Margaret Preston comes to mind.

The range of objects embraced by the artist is a full one. It includes not only the piscatorial items referred to above but also chops, steak, scissors, cups, vases and of course a variety of flowers. The inclusion of glass objects (either singly or in multiples) is of course not new in this genre. McKay’s idiosyncratic language and selection and combination of objects, however, give her take a special and highly appealing contemporary individuality.

Mackay beautifully capitalises on the individual elements in each of the compositions to imbue them with a potent vitality and attraction that marks each work as full of life. This vitality is further expressed in her lush and generous applications of paint and vivid combinations of objects, forms and patterns that constitute this celebratory exhibition.

While Mackay’s GLASS Works celebrates the sensual and the beauty of the everyday, Sally Simpson’s Breathing the bones explores the complex layered relationships that the artist has with the world around her. Her aesthetic is informed by a cerebral approach, tempered with equally emotional and spiritual aspects, to that world and expressed through her sculptures and drawings. In this exhibition the two series of drawings – Lost Coral and Full Fathom Five – use coral as their starting-point. In both of these, Simpson imbues a marvellously subtle tension through the inclusion of a sense of immanence, of something about to happen or that has just happened.

Viewers are witness to the process through the artist’s formal approach to her subject. Just as we begin a dialogue with the artist through her work, so too does the artist with her subject, filtered through her individual sensibilities, experiences and confrontations with that subject.

Her experience of her coral protagonists is twofold – one of coral as a living, thriving organism; the other as coral as bereft of life but still holding within it the wonder of the living coral. To express this, Simpson adopts a form of coexistent reductive-additive procedures. Aspects of each of the drawings are erased and redrawn in a process that reproduces the life cycle of her subject. This expresses to the viewer that sense of witness referred to above.

In each of the drawings the similarity of the morphology of the coral to the human brain/skull is moot. The similarities are important and speak of the relationships of the natural world to that of humanity. The artist points to the fragility of nature when confronted by man by giving the central component in each of her drawings a look of ambiguous disintegration.

The coral has delicate traceries of lines that fall from it towards the bottom of the picture plane. Simpson’s marks lay gently on the surface yet beautifully delineate both subject and theme.

The fact that the coral floats on the pictorial surface gives a sort of ethereal presence to the downward graphic flow, a flow that is thematically inevitable, insistent and regrettable.

The white paper of the background is almost not a background but rather a space for meditative contemplation for the viewer. These are difficult concepts to express but done in a quietly eloquent and intimately seductive manner in the two series of drawings.

Coral reliquary 1 and 2 are composed of the detritus found on Australian beaches – rope, fish bones, coral in resin and fishing tackle. Each of the figures is given an iconic stance, frontal, confronting and interrogative. The question asked by the artist is “What is precious in our moment in history?” The use of found materials and materials found on beaches raises issues of environmental degradation; while the use of these materials references efforts by earlier peoples to appease the forces of nature by returning materials to the natural world.

The figures are schematised, almost abstract in their presentation. Their rectangular helmet-like heads bear an unmistakable reference to Nolan’s Ned Kelly and his black mask; a similarity reinforced by the simplified body and frontal aspect of the whole. While the reference may not be intended Nolan’s Ned Kelly and his relationship to the Australian landscape is not necessarily tangential to Simpson’s environmental concerns. The formal directness and simplicity of these pieces gives them a powerful sculptural presence.

Roadside memorials 5, 6 and 7 are each made of waxed bones, ceramics, steel and thread. These components in their harmonious combinations imbue each work with an archetypal aura at once captivating, allusive and elusive. The elements of unnamed liturgies come to mind and the scale and commanding presence of each reinforces this.

Simpson assembles the works in an (ostensibly) intuitive manner but this is quietly informed by a considered intellectual response to materials and subject and the purposeful elision of these in the achievement of aesthetic resolution. Intimations of ritual, primitive or otherwise are also present here but it is the choice of materials and their appropriateness to the theme and to their relevance of making that gives these works their expressive force.

Breathing the bones is an important exhibition highlighting an astute combination of aesthetic and conceptual intelligence and a beautifully modulated visual vocabulary.