John Cage (1912-1992) was one of the most innovative creatives of the 20^th century. Alexander Boynes, the curator of Cageworks, cites (Cage's) "inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas" as the basis for the way that (some) "Australian artists, particularly Canberra artists, are building on his legacy". Boynes selected four visual artists and the Decibel New Music Ensemble (founded in Western Australia) to exemplify his curatorial premise.

On entering the gallery, viewers walk into an open area before encountering Nicci Haynes's Random Radio. This piece consists of a trestle table on which sits a dozen radios of various types attached to electrical cords and microphones whose overt untidiness is an essential component of the work's presentation. Viewer interaction sets off random and disordered sounds, a sort of sonic phenomena whose indeterminacy (and perhaps cacophony) clearly alludes to Cage's notion that sounds of any sort hold within them musical potential that is a natural part of the world. The contrast of the stillness of empty space with the visual and auditory clashes of this work is particularly pointed.

Kate Vassallo's Chance Forms and Field of arrows pointing at nothing were made over extended periods of time. The latter was made over a year and began "with a random scatter of three or four points" which were subsequently "segmented in different ways and filled in with thousands of fine, straight, ruled lines". The resultant work consists of 32 individual sheets hung in two lines. The densely linear application and structural composition of each drawing imbue a sense of its being simultaneously about its making and the effects of that on the artist. The intensity of the making is reinforced by the intensity of the combination of myriad individual lines visually compressed into the sharply delineated geometric forms that contain them. An insistent kinetic input is present here and in the 18 pages that make up Chance Forms. These are striking pieces in which initial randomness gives way to ordered "disorder".

Decibel New Music Ensemble is the clearest exemplar of the influence and legacy of John Cage. The use of random "scores" and the almost Dada compositional techniques point to their work as paean to Cage but paean tinged with the infusion of other elements of 20th-century avant-garde artistic actions.

Ham Darroch's painted works occupy three of the walls of the Gallery's back spaces. Chambers (1-5) is spread over two of these. Darroch uses rhomboid shapes of various sizes, each with a different focal tone ranging through blues, yellow and red, with these framed in black. The overlaying of forms within forms implies movement and impresses a musical quality into each individual element. I am not convinced of the relationship to Cage but find affinities with Wassily Kandinsky's Farbeklang ("sound of colour") are quietly present. The reference to Kandinsky is underlined in Fairground and Mask (Noh) where geometric forms float over and through the canvas surface in gentle fan-like movements, simultaneously alluding to spatial depth while asserting their pictorial identities.

Kensuke Todo's five works express in his words "a sense of nothing and everything and everything and nothing", a clear articulation of Zen ways of viewing the world. The connection with Cage's preoccupation with Zen philosophies is clear but the work continues the artist's explorations into the temporal and spatial relationships between objects, people and the human experience. His beautifully made stairways leading to nowhere but back into themselves hold an insistent and embracing sculptural power. The inclusion of "kindness (unconditional)" with its Dadaesque toilet roll sitting on a rectangular steel base is perhaps odd, buts its singular incongruity and structural simplicity strangely attractive.

I am not sure that all of the chosen artists are "followers" of the world according to John Cage, but the resultant exhibition is an engaging one instilled with intellectual interrogations and aesthetic delectation.