Three artists on show at TRIO at Bilk Gallery in Manuka, Canberra, use contemporary materials and ideas in their work.

Linda Hughes, Dan Dicaprio and Vicki Mason make art that is wearable. The collection of their work showcases many of the materials used by contemporary artists working in jewellery. It includes textiles, plastic, acrylic paint, fabric pens, wood and traditional metals of silver and gold.

Linda Hughes is a Melbourne-based artist originally from the United Kingdom. Her works are informed by the outward appearance of street signage as well as its purpose in saying "look at me". Ironically by its very familiarity we tend not to see street signage. By incorporating its visual language into a different format such as laminated plastic with a confident sense of design and panache, the artist brings its strident didacticism into the more intimate public space of jewellery.

The designs which the artist extrapolates from this signage owe something to the drawings of Escher and Op Art. The spatial designs on the black and white striped rectangular pendants suggest the flow of movement. The artfully placed shape of traffic light red in the corner of the design arrests this movement of diagonal stripes and cleverly contains it within the visual space. In Double Turnaround, a pendant design of two concentrically striped black balls, this design of spatial illusion is taken further to suggest three dimensional space and the notion of circular movement.

Dan Dicaprio is Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department of the University of Louisiana. Dicaprio's works are small carved organic objects that exist on the periphery of recognition as natural forms suggesting a transitory stage on the way to turning into something known.

These small fluid forms inspired by parts of animal and plant anatomy and carved from ebony or made from precious metals reveal a talent for painstaking process. This emphasis on process has, as the artist has noted, provided time for reflection. The Arterial 02, Holly and Furry Branch brooches are based on sections of plants. The Holly and Arterial 02 brooches adorned with gold become precious objects in an oblique reference perhaps to the traditional craftsman's skills in reproducing nature in precious metal. The silver brooch Furry Branch, however, is more tactile - demanding to be stroked although, as its surface is ornamented painstakingly in a furry covering of silver 'hairs", it can only offer a prickly experience.

Vicki Mason has found her inspiration in flowers and plants. Concerned with urban ecological sustainability, Mason in her Wattle Collection has turned to the Clay Wattle (Acacia glaucoptera) as her subject. It is a plant from arid Australia that requires little water and so is suitable for residential gardens. The result is a cacophony of brightly coloured wattle flowers made into brooches, bangles and a pendant. Unlike the artist's earlier flower works that were made from tightly-bound elements woven, sewed and folded into petals, these wattle flowers are gathered together in clusters of soft stamens.

The stamens are painstakingly made from linen thread subtly coloured by fabric pens and woven together at the base of the work so that they are allowed to free-fall in drifts of colour. In the Red eucalypt stamen necklace the artist has used these stamens in a dramatic fringe of colour that makes an eye-stopping neck piece. The Triple cluster wattle and eucalypt brooch is especially successful with the soft tactile appeal of its little cluster of bright flowers.

The Trio exhibition at Bilk Gallery provides a showcase for three artists who use contemporary idioms and materials to engage and interest the viewer, not only in their jewellery, but also the ideas informing their work.