When pressed for our opinion, we urban souls will say with true conviction - Save the Bush!  What we don't voice is the accompanying phrase - just don't ask me to go into it!  One tends to think of 'The Bush' as existing somewhere east of the airport, either covered with wild flowers or crawling with reptiles, and certainly no place for a respectable four wheel drive.

This concept, along with much of our thinking about the land, is a myth.  The bush is always very close but it takes the eye of an artist and a project like the Kooya Environmental Art Festival to remind us of the beauty that grows around our busy lives.  This exhibition employs a variety of 2D artforms to illustrate and interpret a few of the wild things, in particular plant life and birds, that lurk all around suburbia.  It is quite civilized and inviting - perhaps more myth making?

Peter Clemesha presents Life, an intriguing series of five monoprints, each a portrait study of a single leaf.  Four images are coloured while #5 shows a tawny coloured skeletal rendition of the subject on a black ground.  The intricate illusion caused my partner to assume the real object was preserved between paper and glass.  I do appreciate realism in art - sometimes.

Wendy Lugg offers a more abstract approach to reality.  Her Earth Blanket II - Aftermath  is an excellent example of how quilters can bridge the gap between 2D and 3D art - is this a soft sculpture, a collage, a form of textural art or an example of textile craft?  Throw away all traditional labels except excellent.  Lugg offers what could be interpreted as a bird's eye view of neat parcels of land being encroached upon, or perhaps passed over by the ragged edge of destruction.

A more conventional approach to textiles is seen in the work of Lucy Bromell.  Her sensuous silk stoles enhanced by natural dyes, beads, silk tread, printed images and forgotten feathers - not all at once thank you very much - are stunning.  And one must comment favourably on the fine black and white photographs by Greg Woodward.  These up close views do invite us into the bush as they reveal only the wonder and beauty of nature, like the sun gleaming through the leaves of Zamia Palms.

There are Hidden Treasures all around us, and one of them is the Atwell Gallery which provides a fine venue for this exhibition.  For now, I must climb into my gum boots and go exploring in my neighbour's adventurous 'Not-An-English-Cottage' garden.