It may be a small exhibition, six works in total, but there is much to look at, and learn from, in this powerful presentation. Each artist shows two large works that speak loud and clear about what it means to be an urban Aboriginal. Hill demonstrates how words can crush the spirit, Pease looks for the spirit within and Pushman finds a way to preserve it.

Hill's works employ figurative and literary elements together with ancient symbolism to emphasize how words try to dominate. In the grey scale image Validation, words such as intimidate, separate, decimate are scratched into the paint to come between a small painted photograph of a woman and girl child and concentric circles. These circular symbols are almost obliterated by the expanding rectilinear composition. The work suggests the futility of societal attempts to force round pegs into square holes. In Assimilation, Hill depicts a brown girl in a black and white world. Half hidden in the fabric of her frock are letters that spell out the title of the work, around the edges we read its definition. Meanwhile the child stands on a flowing green ground that hosts blood red words of familial relationships, from kin to land. This is a well executed and powerful work.

Pease also owns fine figurative skills. His Self Portrait in diptych format involves a small well painted image of a little boy playing army games complete with helmet and plastic gun, and a large red and orange target of textural interest. Together they raise concerns about internal and external cultural confusion. The Indigenous child knows only the American TV hero while the target may be interpreted as either a Western icon, something to aim at or for, or an Indigenous symbol for a land form or belief system. One thinks the latter after viewing Pease's Wadatji Country, Belief and Disbelief 2, a mystical and powerful rendition of dark denuded trees through which a reassuring white light (spirit) shines.

Pushman's work has a different sense of power and mystery. It calls the viewer across the gallery for a closer look then encourages them to step back and see. Here are two large works from the artist's Scar series, a collection of paintings referencing Indigenous ritual scarification, marks of maturity. Marks on the land or the body tell their own stories, indicate a rite of passage, preserve a culture. In these paintings bands of dark green and black (#12), and dark grey and black (#15) run horizontally across the surface. Where the jagged edges of each band meet there is a sense of resistance rather then gentle blending but the bands do lock together, like new skin with old. There is a process going on here both in the painting and within the artist and we witness it as it radiates from the canvas.

This strong exhibition one that should be experienced by all.