public/private: a small token
Mandy Ridley’s Public/ Private: A Small Token brought together work four years in the making, work which began as a public art project for Brisbane’s Melbourne Street Southbank and became a cross cultural exchange in India. This exhibition is a homecoming for the artist and allows the visitor a meditation on the process of art making.
The exhibition consists of fifteen translucent polypropylene panels hanging suspended from the gallery ceiling; a large blue line drawing of Croton leaves crayoned directly to the gallery wall; and a collage of photographs depicting plants, project participants, Indian friends and street scenes filled with the flowers of offering.
For over a decade, Mandy Ridley has explored Folk Art from around the world, focusing on re-forming the original process into one familiar to her own environment. Public/Private: A Small Token draws on the traditional art of paper-cutting common to many cultures—China, Switzerland, Mexico and Hawaii, for example—as an inspiration for both process and intent. Its forms are commonly flora, fauna and the characters of legend, intricately and lovingly cut from a single sheet of paper to display ‘naturalistic’ scenes or interlacing decorative motifs based on local flowers and leaves. Their purpose is to decorate the home or community at various seasonal or festival times. Moved by the beauty of this delicate art, Ridley began by exploring the plants and flowers found near her home in Brisbane: the Bougainvillea flower; the fiery leaves of the Croton; and exotic frangipani.
Initially the designs shown in the exhibition were worked into paper using the decorative motif style. Photographs show them transformed by (computer-driven) laser cut into aluminium plates prepared for further development as public art. When the public