In 2004 the Drill Hall staged a major survey exhibition of the work of the Sydney-based artist Hilarie Mais. This exhibition, curated by Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, looks at developments in her art since the Canberra show.

Mais was born in Leeds in 1952, attended the Winchester School of Art and then the Slade, before relocating to New York. In 1981 she came to Sydney with her Australian-born husband William Wright and since then has played a prominent role in the Australian art scene. Wright, who died in 2014 and was a fine painter, is best remembered as a visionary curator, and the exhibition and the substantial catalogue are dedicated to his memory.

It is tempting to discuss the work of Mais in formalist terms and indeed, since about 1986, much of her art has been preoccupied with the idea of the grid, especially as realised as abstract latticework constructions and paintings. Whereas for some artists the grid has become a rather sterile formalist strategy, almost a straightjacket that imprisons the individual elements, for Mais the grid represents liberation. It opens the path to a form of art that bypasses narrative and her ingenious constructions communicate through pure feeling, engaging the viewer on a sensory and spiritual level. Notions of access and denial, entrances, the maze, veils and barriers all play a role, as Mais creates very beautiful, elegant and sensual objects, which evoke an immediate emotive response from the beholder.

In Mais’s art, the grid is stripped of its mechanical nature and geometric austerity. By adopting deliberate strategies such as leaving the marks of the screws that bolt the pieces of wood together and retaining strong brushstrokes as well as imperfections in the materials, she humanises and personalises her objects. They become objects for contemplation and meditation that communicate on an individual level.

What has become more pronounced in the recent work is the artist’s preoccupation with the physical, optical and spiritual spaces that surround her constructed and painted objects. She speaks of ghosting, where the colour in her latticework constructions seems to radiate onto the surrounding walls and create its own ambience. A number of the pieces are propped up against the gallery walls to enhance the effect of radiating colour and, while earlier pieces had a marked vibrancy and shimmering intensity of colour, some of the more recent objects explore softer and more muted tones, moving from the merely optical to a more spiritual dimension. As Mais somewhat evocatively noted in 2015, “Reflection is what is left behind, reflection is memory”.

The Tempus series of paintings are perhaps some of the most cerebral pieces at the exhibition where Mais explores the relationship between the grid and the square, as well as the circle and the spiral, all within a growing and bewildering complexity. In Tempus 3, 2009 colour has been reduced to monochrome, while the dots, both painted and in relief, assert a mesmerising pattern.

This a slow art exhibition that benefits from prolonged viewing.