Review: Broads at Belco create memorable images of our vulnerable environment

The Broad Collective consists of eight women artists - Belinda Allen, Lee Bethel, Elizabeth Borghero, Caroline Corby, Sonja Karl, Sam Newstead, Leanne Thompson and Kerry Toomey - who are making their debut splash at Belco Arts under their somewhat provocative title. Most of the artists appear to have links with Bundeena, while Hazelhurst at the Moran Gallery initiated the collective in 2019. They are all artists with established track records.

Although the artists are at different levels of technical achievement and conceptual sophistication, they are united as women serious about their art practice. They are all to some extent preoccupied with the environment. None of them work with precise mimetic representational forms and they employ a wide and varied range of materials. It is a large show with about 68 exhibits - items vary in size from huge sprawling forms to small and very delicate figurines.

Bethel's Women hold up half the sky is a piece that stops you in your tracks. Over a metre square, it is delicately constructed with paper so that at first you are intrigued by the bold overall design and then gradually, as your eye is drawn into the work, you notice the great delicacy of the surfaces of the paper that have been manipulated in numerous ways. The piece may be interpreted as women's work, in keeping with the title based on the famous pronouncement of Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong, but it is also a work about the materiality of paper - a second skin that carries the scars and experiences of the journey of the artist.

Another monumental piece is Borghero's sculptural installation, Banksia Field. Measuring about 57 centimetres by 57 centimetres, it is woven out of banksia leaves to create a somewhat mesmerising kinetic construction. Quite often when artists reuse driftwood, seashells, interesting twigs and branches, I feel that they could have done better if they simply left the materials where they first found them.

Borghero has developed a visual intelligence and a subtle sensibility that has enabled her to enter the spirit of her materials. She conveys the sensation of the wind and the rain passing through banksia trees, leaving a mysterious pattern that belongs to nature and which the artist has tapped into and liberated.

Karl presents a series of monotypes, such as Capturing a glimpse and Layering silhouettes, where the forms of nature, including leaves and other found elements, are not depicted but are incorporated into the artwork as active collaborators in the artistic process. Surfaces, textures and strategically placed voids hint at mysterious dimensions that are frequently overlooked in the surrounding environment.

Thompson appears determined to arrive at an earthworm eye level in her detailed and delicate paintings that appear almost like specimens collected in the field. Her painting Natured is like a study of a whole ecosystem, where everything is interdependent in a dense mesh of realities. Employing an encaustic (wax) technique, she delicately combines pigments with seeds to create slices of nature that seem to radiate their own charm and power. In other pieces, including Imperceptible, windmill grass and seeds are incorporated within the fabric of the painting.

Allen's evocative and lyrical photographs and Toomey's whimsical constructions are other unforgettable elements in this artistic interrogation of nature.

The Broad Collective combine freshness, passion and professionalism to create memorable images of our vulnerable yet exceptionally beautiful and constantly changing environment.