John Nixon must be the most prolific minimal and conceptual artist that Australia ever produced. Since the late 1960s, when his work was first unleashed onto the Australian art world, through to the present, Nixon has been making and exhibiting his work in numerous venues nationally and internationally.

Seriality, eclecticism and bricolage have been some of his most recognisable obsessions, and while his modus operandi has been essentially non-figurative, the net that he casts over the surrounding urban detritus sweeps up a plentiful catch of recognisable artefacts. Source material is absorbed, slightly reconfigured and processed into art and exhibited through a plethora of exhibition spaces or publishing ventures, many of which have been established by the artist himself.

The question of medium has never been a hindrance in Nixon’s work, so that paintings, constructions, assemblages, prints, drawings, artists books and collages are as likely to be employed as film, photography and recorded sound. Collections of his work are spread throughout the nation and to many artists he appears as an art elder and a mentor with his experimental art spaces and publications offering opportunities for his contemporaries as well as for younger emerging artists to display their work.

Recently Nixon donated to the ANU Art Collection 75 works on paper, dating from 1986 to 2015, and a selection from these forms this exhibition. The exhibition includes a number of early woodblock prints and etchings, ink paintings, drawings, more recent colour swatch collages, found paper drawings and cardboard assemblage paintings. The randomness and playfulness of some of the works is reminiscent of Antoni Tàpies and of street art, where nothing is too sacred or too profane to enter the art making process.

The display of these relatively small works on paper as a string of objects hung in a line around the four sides of Gallery 3 (in the past lovingly known as The Pod) produces a somewhat mesmerising effect, like small flashing screens. Close inspection of the work as the viewer circumnavigates the space may bring to mind parallels with designs by the great Russian Suprematist artist, Kazimir Malevich, but from the centre of the room it becomes like a whirling kaleidoscope.

As you spend some time with these works, a smile creeps onto your face, as you perceive a wry sense of humour. Perhaps the artist does not take these collages, prints and paintings terribly seriously – and neither should we.