Getting to know Mike Riddle's artwork

I have known Mike Riddle for quite some time - he was (and is) a work colleague of mine at QUT Creative Industries. But it is only fairly recently that I first saw images of his own artworks, or perhaps even knew that he made work of his own. In fact, we had talked about his work during the installation of the Fast Friends exhibition, as he was helping to bring into the gallery works by Marcel Daniels and Dan Mafe, and not long after that Mike gave me a CD with images of his work.

When you see the works, you will immediately see how good they are for the Pace Project. I liked the quality of the objects he makes, and also the observation of the mundane parts of our lives that the objects imply. Some pieces that I am particularly drawn to remind me of strange tools from the past or from another culture that we no longer- if we ever did-understand how to use.

Others literally delineate our daily lives:
 

Image courtesy Mike Riddle. Photograph by Carl Warner

Image courtesy Mike Riddle. Photograph by Carl Warner