'NOX - a record of things passing by night' at Grainger Gallery is a must-see

She is also a photographer who has developed her own alternative process, Lumachrome Glass Printing, with which she now makes extraordinarily beautiful and artistic images of roadkill - "a threnody for fallen rabbits, birds, spiders and other beings with whom we share this planet". A threnody is a lyric poem of mourning.

The image titles reveal something of Crispin's poetry talents. For example, She remembered running, baby in pouch, the burrow nearly visible, birds lifting from the water tank at the first rifle's crack - so cold in the long grass, day drops night, and the joey stills. In the winter sky over Braidwood, Enid finds her baby again, 2021. A loving description of a wombat mother and her frozen joey.

Wondering what Crispin's works have to do with photography when no camera was involved? Photography can be defined as the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface. Technically, there's no requirement to use a camera.

Crispin's earliest Lumachrome glass prints in 2018 were made simply as expanded sunprints, on black and white fibre paper, coated with her own emulsions, and left to expose under glass for between 12 and 36 hours.

Her practice has evolved to use complex layers of glass and chemistry to control the colours and textures. She says the works are the result of genuine collaboration with the landscape, literally constructed from light, earth and flesh.

She loves that the technique makes dead animals and birds seem alive again. It is light alone that manifests these colours and shapes; not paint or anything that can be completely controlled.

For finer detail, Crispin uses chemigram variants, painting compounds like selenium or copper chloride directly onto feathers, scales or fur.

Her process is adapted for each work. She might paint an animal's blood into the image during exposure. Ochres, seeds, sticks and other materials are sourced where the animal or bird was found. If maggots and flies appear, their tracks are incorporated into the work. These 2020 prints clearly show her process has developed splendidly.

Her work draws on ideas and stories gathered over many years, while tracing her family's Bpangerang-Gunaikurnai ancestry. It is wonderfully accompanied in this exhibition by sculptural pieces from two other local artists - Stephen Harrison (Murrumbateman artist - sculptures, paintings, drawings) and Victoria Royds (Braidwood visual artist/sculptor - and a holistic carbon farmer).

Speaking at the opening, Crispin referred to Royds as the queen of regenerative farming, and to a project she is working on with Harrison as a regenerative road bearing witness to the animals and other wildlife that were killed on the path between Canberra and the coast during the 2019-20 fires.

This exhibition, in many ways, is the first step along the road. Crispin suggests everything beautiful in the world is so because it is transitory, and the exhibition allows us to witness the miracle of things before they are gone.

By chance but nevertheless appropriately, this exhibition opened in the same week as other events in Canberra celebrated caring for country.

There is insufficient space here to describe the sculptural pieces adequately. But I must say that they are quality works by two skilled artists, well worth looking at and thinking about.