15 March – 20 April 2002

Gallery 4A is pleased to present three exhibitions by emerging artists from Sydney and Queensland which explore ideas of decoration, memory and domesticity.

In Celebration by Mandy Ridley replicates the celebratory papercraft and objects found in the Chinatowns of Brisbane and Sydney. Utilising these decorative found tourist objects, Ridley, recreates these objects at a greater scale and with a greater intensity of colours. As a non-Asian woman, Ridley’s richly crafted objects attempt to understand the complex layers of our multicultural society through an exploration of appropriation and cultural authenticity.

Untitled (another study between focal tension and all things pleasant), explores the ideas of domesticity, beauty and desire. Adam Dorahy presents a single large wall painting, based upon a floral motif, delicately painted using slightly reflective white and house paints. These paintings appear and disappear into the white walls of the gallery as the viewer moves around the gallery.

Anchaini an ghra (requests of love) is an exhibition by Angharad Rixon, a young artist based in Sydney who creates incredibly beautiful objects through a structural and conceptual exploration of lace. “Lace,” Rixon says, “is about holes. I am fascinated by the spaces between things…the breath between words, rests within music and the space that remains when something is gone.” Rixon uses this traditional craft practice to create networks of spaces, these small fragments of lace are then soaked in slip porcelain, which are later fired, to reveal a network of empty holes.

Mandy Ridley lives and works in Brisbane and has had exhibitions at various artist run spaces in Queensland including Soapbox, Smith + Stonely and Palace Gallery, she has also exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.

Adam Dorahy is a recent graduate of the University of Western Sydney. Dorahy has exhibited at Artspace, Sydney, Kudos Gallery, Sydney as well as at the University of Western Sydney.

Angharad Rixon is a recent graduate from the University of Wollongong, she has exhibited in exhibitions at The Long Gallery, Wollongong; Kudos Gallery, Paddington, in 2000 she was included in the National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary.