"Our way of thinking is not as linear as it is in Europe... In art you obviously have a background in art history that is very rich. We don’t have that in Brazil at all... We just do everything in a very empirical way, even art." So writes Lucia Nogueira (1950-1998), and there is a definite, joyous empiricism about her work, as one would expect from an exhibition whose title is Mischief. Hide and Seek (1997) greets you soon after entry, featuring a fridge turned against the wall, presumably counting to a hundred (or forever).

Discarded objects – found on the street, as Nogueira reports – are playfully manipulated by the artist to produce witty object-narratives. And yet, there is something about this playfulness which is mere surface movement: behind Nogueira’s wit is something desperately sad.

Her five-minute black-and-white film Smoke (1996) clearly illustrates this melancholy. A black bench looks out to sea; a black step-ladder appears alone in a field; black kites drift through the sky. These objects are anthropomorphised, yes – but it is loneliness, not liveliness, that is connoted.

This tendency is reflected further in Nogueira’s sculptural work. In Pulse and At Will and the Other (both 1989), her bags of black beans huddle together as if some closeness has to be found in a world otherwise desolate and empty. In an untitled piece opposite, two aluminium drinks cans gather close, stripped of their identity, staring over the edge onto which they are placed.

Nogueira’s drawing continues to fuse childishness and melancholy. One striking penned image features a field of blank faces, staring. Opposite, another work is almost entirely black, an acre of darkness, encroaching. The images she offers, however warm or tender – helicopters or pink elephants – are traces of something seemingly departed.

There are many elements to Nogueira’s work – sex, sensuality, robustness – but this show emphasises melancholy above all else. The discarded fridge staring at its wall, counting; the wooden drum prevented from rolling with such mortal definitiveness; bags of black beans, huddled. This is a profound and touching show.