Minefield: The Art of Mona Ryder

Minefield: The Art of Mona Ryder explores the many evocative and visceral works created over more than four decades by this significant Australian artist. Presenting prints created in the late 1970s, the relics remaining from a major installation of the 1980s, paintings, watercolours, textiles, embroideries, artist’s books, as well as new works, this major retrospective exhibition charts an extraordinary artistic energy unrestrained by medium or material. Drawing from our shared subconscious, the artist’s personal narratives, domestic detritus and upcycled materials, Ryder takes us on a journey redolent with emotionally charged imagery and rousing social critique. Qualities of scale, form and tactility are employed to evoke a sensory response in the viewer which, more often than not, incites feelings of unease, agitation or gives rise to a sense of the abject. Ryder’s stratagem is one of protest and her artworks question gender roles and cultural norms not only within the realm of the everyday, but deeply probe our ideas about art and creativity as well.

Mona Ryder was born in Brisbane in 1945 and received a Bachelor of Visual Arts (1991) from QUT and an Associate Diploma of Visual Arts (1981) from the then Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education. While Ryder’s work has received accolades nationally and internationally with inclusion in high profile exhibitions, Minefield is a significant reappraisal of her practice within contemporary context and prompts us to consider that it may perhaps have even greater relevancy and urgency today.