Such intriguing curves

Belconnen Arts Centre, Emu Bank, Belconnen. Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm.

On until April 14.

Momentum is a small, intriguing exhibition of 18 female artists, whose practice encompasses sculpture. It is intriguing because I am not sure what the exhibition elucidates collectively about these artists, who range in experience from the doyen of Canberra artists, Jan Brown, to recent art school graduates.

It is tempting to try to create artistic links between them - does their work exhibit a feminine sensibility, is the different approach to their work based on age and experience, and is there a regional influence that underlies their work? The only standout link is that all these artists have studied or been associated with the Canberra School of Art at some stage in their career and many continue to practise in the Canberra region. Perhaps that, in the final analysis, is what their art practice has in common and what the School of Art has obviously nurtured is diversity. The exhibition demonstrates that contemporary sculpture encompasses all forms of three-dimensional work in a variety of materials, from traditional media to found objects, and that artists work both in traditional ways as well as in installation and video.

Brown is, of course, celebrated for her public sculptures in Civic Centre and Commonwealth Park. She is also renowned for her bird sculptures, with their very strong individual characters. Her life-size Owl sculpture in this exhibition seems to view his surroundings with a rather quizzical air - his leaning in towards the viewer is a tour de force of nicely balanced form.

Birds feature in other works: the feather stuck into a knife socket in Jacqueline Bradley's witty Golden Eggs assemblage and the nest created in a cycling helmet in her other work, Nest Helmet. Bradley explores the symbiotic relationship between nature and man. This relationship is also a component of Sally Simpson's arresting work, Venerated Remains, which is a highlight of the exhibition. A group of small, bound mummy-like forms made from lace, fish bones and mud are reflected in a mirrored surface. The work has a great physical presence and exudes a sense of the mystery we attach to bones as relics. It suggests many interpretations and arouses many associations, both historical and environmental. Chloe Bussenschutt's constructed wall pieces sensitively use language and found objects to draw attention to the stages of life in the farming cycle. Heather Brenchley's Here, Now, Grow objectifies food and plays with the idea of telling knitted potatoes to grow when obviously they can't - a failure of communication.

The pastoral landscape is also the inspiration for Wendy Teakel's work Confluence. Teakel's work always displays a finely attuned sensibility to the emotive appeal of texture, line and mark making. In this work, she evokes the sense of the use of land for pasture through found objects of wire and wool. An enveloping carapace contains an inner core of wool-tufted wire to suggest perhaps the enclosure and colonising of the land for pasture.

Mary Kayser works with metal and wood components to make miniature sculptures of admirable precision. She brings together these small elements to give expression to the realisation of thoughts and concepts within a larger narrative. This interest in bringing together various components is also found in Dianne Libke's series of small, beautifully realised animated works. Libke's carefully placed found objects in clear glass light bulbs are set in motion to represent the changing of the seasons and the passing of time.

Some of the artists deal with personal feelings through an exploration of the human figure. Ellyn Rose's large, breast-like forms hang heavily from the wall to suggest, among other things, nurture and vulnerability, while Fiona Veikkanen intimates this also with her large, soft reconstructed cushion. Michelle Day's forms, constructed from soft flesh-like silicone combined with mechanical parts, question the relationship of medical technology and our body. Elizabeth Kelly also gives expression to the scientific constructions of life in her impressive steel and glass tower construction, which hints at the structural cellular chains of organisms. Rachel Bowak's sculpture features stainless steel line sculptures of everyday items to explore relationships between landscape and the human environment. S.A. Adair does this on a larger scale. In her wall panel, she insinuates the presence of the human form in blue continuous line drawings that blur the line between sculpture and drawing. The work of Tracey Sarsfield, Victoria Royds and Heike Qualitz also investigates the various stages of the human consciousness expressed through video and the human figure and, in the case of Saara March, in her imaginative and surreal organic forms.

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition provides a context for each artist's work. It is a necessary adjunct to an exhibition that gives only a tantalising glimpse of a selection of works by artists who engage with many themes concerning our environment and the human psyche.