In the context of her ten solo exhibitions over the past fifteen years, Mona Ryder's current installation, Mother, Other, Lover can be seen as a rite of passage. It could even be said that the whole exhibition consists of ritual markers and signposts. Like alien implants in the serene setting of the Queensland Art Gallery watermall, these twenty seven vibrant and clamorous constructions, impose their insistent presence on their gallery surrounds, almost jostling one another in their demand for attention and their claims on the space. Through them, predominantly modern, synthetic and domestic materials are shaped into a contemporary expression of that most timeless and universal cluster of human metaphors, the quest for self know ledge and the journey of self discovery. The exhibition not only operates as a rite of passage in the artist's work, it also takes rite of passage as its subject matter.
Ambiguous and irreverent, these large scale 'sculptures' set up an internal network of myths and symbols, operating as the ritual objects or masks which mark and guard a traveller's path, while at the same time offering tests and temptations to divert or to destroy. Their pulsating plastic hearts, jagged metal teeth, and watchful tendrils have a range of literary parallels. There are suggestions of the enchanted forest to destruction, or the life-abrogating lotus eaters whose temptation is to "Have a Nice Day" in banal perpetuity. However unlike classical or traditional mythologies, or even their latter-day Indiana Jones 'boys own adventure ' manifestations, this is quest of fantasy, with its mischievous and malicious overtones, as well as echoes of such figures as the unknown warrior who challenges the errant knight in combat, the magician whose... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline