Mixed-media portrait of desert

presents the work of six artists (Rachel Bowak, Nic Hempel, Pamela Lofts, Pip McManus, Kim Mahood and Andrew Moynihan), each of whom has had (and in some instances continues to have) connections with the Tanami and Central Desert. In the winter of 2007 the group spent several weeks in residence at the Tanami Mine and the Tanami Downs station in the Tanami Desert, north-west of Alice Springs. The project was made possible by the traditional owners of (parts of) the area, the Warlpiri people.

The Groundrush mine, after which the project was named, was the last site of the Tanami Mill before it was closed and rehabilitation took place. As such it provided opportunities for each artist individually and in collaboration to explore different aspects of the site, its history and impact on the environment and how that is being addressed. Indigenous ways of seeing country were provided by visits to ancestral sites with the traditional owners.

The background provides thematic bases that connect the individual artists. The exhibition offers more opaque connections while celebrating individual contributions. All the gallery space at CCAS is utilised and the generosity of this gives an overall "feel" to the exhibition for which the staff should be congratulated. Sound is important in its role in providing atmospheric character and it is introduced immediately on entry to the gallery. The six artists cover a variety of mediums and include photography, video, installation, performance, painting and writing.

Pip McManus and Nic Hempel's Tailings Dam is a video and audio installation in Cube Space. A single figure sits below the long and low horizon line of the desert, a burning fire beside him. The figure plays the cello drawing out plaintive sounds interspersed with almost silent intervals that increase the drama of the music and the dramatic persona of the landscape. This is a meditation, a humble paean to the environment and provides an appropriate introduction to the rest of the works. It is also fitting that two other works by McManus and Hempel close the exhibition. In Donga A and Lake Ruth Sonata various combinations of image and sound provide visual and aural experiences of the landscape and the landscape altered, in diary-like compendia that are hauntingly beautiful.

Andrew Moynihan's 9 black-and-white pinhole photographs hold the aura of history chiefly through the primitive technology used but also convey a sense of the fragility of the places, etc depicted. Their linear alignment on the long wall in Middlespace is very effective. That placement and their static character is a clever ploy to the kinetic video sitting adjacent to them. His Embroidered Blanket is a large felt square covered with threads and feathers spread across the floor. It presents like the reminder of some undisclosed struggle, and its poignant simplicity is aesthetically and thematically telling.

In the MAINspace Kim Mahood's Tanami Groundsheet 1 – Traces and Tanami Groundsheet 2 – Tracklog reference Indigenous art and that of (some of) the contemporary visual commentators on the Australian environment and ecology. The use of repeated pattern and imposition of layered views highlight the spores of previous activity and man's ineffable footprint on the land. The scale of these two pieces provides a visual and legible base from which the viewer can determine the exhibition's thematic base.

Rachel Bowak's 19 pieces effectively comprise a single installation. The Shadow series, rubber silhouettes, are looming shadows across the floor and up the walls of MAINspace. They are a dark and ominous presence. A series of outlined tools made of steel wire hang in a line bathed in an eerie light. The delicacy and simplicity of these drawings in space provide stark contrast with the floor-based rubber figures. Bowak comments on the fragile relationships at play between man and the environment, here a very particular environment that encompasses both Indigenous and more recent histories. Her use of materials reinforces her conceptual thrust. The longevity and durability of steel played off against the fragility of rubber are pointed and selective contrasts.

Pamela Lofts' art is concerned with the stories and materials of Central Australia where she lived until her untimely death in 2012 in Alice Springs. This dark thing is like much else in this exhibition, a haunting work. The three photographs that make up her commanding triptych each hold within themselves very different aspects of the story of Lofts' interaction with the places of the Tanami Desert. Each is very singular but their combination is a commanding and questioning visual statement.

works on a number of levels. It works best as a showcase for individual artists. Its premise requires a text and that is present in the exhibition through the accompanying catalogue. As an eloquent memorial for Pamela Lofts it is a moving acknowledgement by the five other artists involved.