After India: Site 1
Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) Window, South Brisbane, Queensland, 2007.
Laser-cut polypropylene and lights. Site specific work, 1500 x 2500 x 1000mm.
Created in response to a 2004/05 Asialink residency to India, Brisbane-based artist Mandy Ridley has produced works over two sites that consider the nature of the collaborative process and the materiality of art making.
For After India: Site 1, Ridley enlists the services of a team of skilled technicians to fabricate and install a large-scale light sculpture. Laser-cut from polypropylene the work is of a large bough of bougainvillea blooms. Each flower illuminated by a small globe and many featuring intricate cut out patterning based upon Mehendi designs.
Installation view and detail
"These plants are found as commonly in many Indian cities as the blooms that we encounter daily in Brisbane. In fact the widespread and dynamic global colonisation of bougainvillea provides a potent metaphor for both the experience of the traveller and indeed human survival: beautiful vibrant colour, strong voracious growth and even the tenacious thorny structure of the very plant!" – Mandy Ridley
Go to After India: Site 2 exhibition page.
Media & documentation
Process: development & installation
Installation photography by Rod Buchholz. Portrait photo (above left) by Janice K.