Me time at Canberra Contemporary Art Space Braddon raises questions

Me Time is the sort of exhibition that gives places like the CCAS its raison d'être. It is not an easy exhibition and certainly does not contain art that fits in with Matisse's idea of art being a comfortable armchair. It is an eclectic collection but one united by the fact that, in the words of the curator, Sabrina Baker, "the artists…are making work reflecting our changing relationship with current technology and raising questions regarding ethics, authenticity, community and identity". Each artist's approach is idiosyncratic and interrogative, the questions posited aimed at both themselves and their audience.

In the Cube, Claudia Nicholson presents five videos that speak of her mixed South American and Australian heritage. Each is brief and populated with a range of images/icons that constitute the highly personal narrative of the whole, the personal nature of which is reinforced by the random inclusion of photo-booth selfies. References to popular (Western) culture abound and these are accompanied by more opaque references to South American folklore. The references include the ubiquitous presence of the Catholic Church, a burning rain forest, red roses and audios of popular music. In the darkened space of the Cube, the placement of the two screens at right-angles to each other creates a torrent of sound and imagery. While this may be demanding of the viewer, it also acts as a metaphor for those influences (overt and covert) whose combination provides personal and cultural identity.

Claudia Greathead is a painter whose two untitled works use thick paint in flowing gestural swathes that simultaneously subsume and give form to the human figures embedded in her luscious surfaces. In Timeless Trophies she combines post-it photographic portraits of young men in a variety of pursuits. I'm not sure whether this is a "to do" list or an "I've done it" list but whatever its impact is substantial. The multiplicity of the post-its points to the objectifying, the depersonalising of online dating and perhaps its ultimate futility?

Tully Arnot's Breath is beautiful. Initially it is hard to read. Its scale is large and its slowly revelatory character requires the viewer to become involved with its 12'40" duration. A small section of the artist's barely discernible torso is blown up into an abstract form on the gallery wall. Its movement – its breathing – is minimal but absolutely present. The accompanying audio is also minimal but it is a vehement minimalism that is quietly effective and seductive.

@Justin Bieber by Janis Lejins is a surreal installation that continuously prints out tweets being sent to Justin Bieber interspersed with tweets being sent to Donald Trump. Its premise may appear absurd but the impact of both these figures, each as arguably surreal as the other is of course massive. The pile of ticker tape growing on the floor as it emerges from the printer underscores the vacuity of the written word as used by these two men. It is also a potent reminder of something more sinister.

Giselle Stanborough's Find the Lover You Deserve is about online dating. It is presented as a corporate sales pitch but its ultimate message is that you will never find the lover you deserve (or maybe you have already found that person) because there is nothing to the artist's online dating service. This is a clever and incisive work that utilises the "machinery" behind dating sites to comment on them.

Anna May Kirk's Alice (Human Unit) is a large (310 by 206 centimetres) wall decal. It is apparently a self-portrait "made up of images from the artist's Google photos". Kirk uses The Police's Every Breath You Take as focus for a set of disembodied eyes and a mouth that articulates the song's lyrics. The eyes move independently of one another and the words flashing onto the screen form an oddly disruptive narrative that is disquietingly attractive.Its grand scale gives it a strong visual presence. The fluidity of the image and its viscous quality make it attractive although somewhat eerily so.

Ben Forster's multipartite and conceptually complex work is composed of "150 movies carefully downloaded from a file sharing site … then downloaded the subtitle files, taking only the descriptions of audio and collated each of these phrases into groups from most frequently to least frequently used". I said it was complex. The point of the work is apparently the ways words and phrases lose their original meaning and sense when they are removed from their original source and replaced or dislocated into new and different contexts. I thought that was semantics?

Me Time is demanding and edgy. These qualities underscore each of the works displayed and the overall interrogative stance offers new ways of looking at and thinking about the technologies that permeate our everyday lives.