Mona Ryder

Head hunters comments on society's reliance on symbols. 'Clothes maketh the man', and woman too. Desirability and status in relationships are reflected through our external facades, our dress and our homes. Veneer and image matter more than substance as the once fashionable artefact is replaced by the new. The public are bedazzled by the slick advertising campaigns of large companies who often use oppressive and ruthless persuasion to beguile. Advertising executives are the modern sorcerers and shamans, wielding their illusion to encourage acquisition of the very latest technology particularly household electrical appliances, computers and cars; throw out rather than repair, replace and be fashionable.

This work is an extension of my Corporate bodyseries that explores the use of power in top levels of business management where it can corrupt relationships and even society itself.

Mona Ryder

Julie Shiels

These pyjamas are made from mattresses dumped in the street. Having once formed the bed of a person or persons unknown, they embody memories of other lives - from the intimate site of dreams and nightmares, passion and loneliness, birth and death, abandonment and redemption.

Sunday best draws attention to the need for a paradigm shift. Unsustainable consumption cannot be solved by simply reducing, reusing and recycling. The solution must also lie in finding value and meaning in pursuits that do not consume resources. I invite the viewer to sharpen their eyes, to observe the traces left behind by human activity and speculate about the stories that this evidence suggests. By combining the roles of flaneur, a person who gains pleasure from observing (that is not consuming) and glaneur, one who discovers the usefulness of overlooked and discarded materials, it becomes possible to creatively engage with the urban landscape while exploring the narratives of consumer culture particular to Australia.

Julie Shiels

Simon Horsburgh

Discarded rubber thongs are a pervasive presence along the coastlines of Australia, providing a reminder of our responsibility to tread lightly upon the earth and leave only our footprints behind us in the sand. Untitled monkey business fuses the material nature of a rubber thong with the formal structure of a banana peel. The work is informed by two popular assumptions - monkeys eat bananas and banana peels, when stepped on, are treacherous. The slapstick evocation presages a fall and in this context, lends potency to the banana peel as a metaphor for the by-products of consumption, and by extension, the pitfalls of unsustainable environmental practice. The work equates the notion of monkey business with irresponsible behaviour and evokes a narrative in the pile of banana peels, which suggests a period spent recklessly gorging on a one-time plentiful resource.

Simon Horsburgh