Cyber-punk novelist, William Gibson, used the term 'pattern recognition' as the title and concept for his fast-paced story about his 'cool hunter' heroine and her world of logos, trademarks and branding. Nine artists from Australia and New Zealand have embraced this notion of pattern in the exhibition Pattern Recognition, a collaborative project between Craft Queensland and Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design. First launched at Sydney's Object Gallery in January during the Sydney Festival, the exhibition is soon to open at Noosa Regional Gallery.

Since the curators Rhana Devenport and Andrea Higgins began the formulation of the exhibition, an extraordinary pattern of recognition has literally emerged for many of the artists selected. Digital media artist, Damien Frost, whose work incorporates images relating directly to William Gibson's novel, recently won an international grant to exhibit his design work in London. Queensland's Joanna Bone became the Ranamok National Glass Award winner in 2005. New Zealand artist Sarah Hughes saw her vividly-coloured optical artwork winning the 2005 Paramount Prize at the NZ Wallace Art Awards. New Zealand designer David Trubridge was a prize-winner at the 2005 International Furniture Design Fair Asahikawa in Japan. Queensland ceramicist, Mel Robson, was selected for this year's Ceramics Biennale in Seoul. And at the end of 2005 Queensland installation artist, Ann-Maree Hanna, was nominated by Monument magazine as one of the 50 most important graduating students of the year.

Pattern Recognition also features vessels made from fabrics such as tulle and lace by NSW textile artist Dorothy Filshie, weavings and new resin casts by Queensland's leading elder for the Wik Women Weaver group Mavis Ngallametta, and jewellery by Western Australian Helen Britton who combines souvenirs from natural landscapes with German pressed glass from 1950s.

While this exhibition is the gathering of nine prestigious Australasian artists for whom pattern is a shared language, the result is a diverse range of expression - from suspended skeletal leaves, to roadmaps on porcelain cups, to digital images on a plasma screen. All are stimulating, intriguing and surprising.

"Our lives are propelled by patterns, both known and unseen," explains curator Rhana Devenpot. Co-curator Andrea Higgins adds, "'Pattern Recognition' gives us a new way of recognising how pattern exists around us and how we instinctively - sometimes mechanically - live in response to them."'

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Image:Damien Frost Pattern Reaction (detail) 2006, photography: Damien Frost