Appalachian Couture – Mandy Mitton

Press Release
The Maillardville Cultural Appreciation Society is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent work by Mandy Mitton. Through an almost imperceptible veneer of personal history Mitton cross pollinates the realms of domestic and fine art. Her work engages the minutia of creative labour, examining those spaces where it is most easily disregarded, while wryly belying its true nature.
The works presented oscillate between sociological and artistic concerns, rewarding extended inquiry with a depth latent in the process of their creation. The everyday is reevaluated through Mandy Mitton’s engagement with familiar processes to create a system of signage that finally points to somewhere distant from its genesis.

Forgetting Work
Telling stories doesn’t always bring people closer together. Sometimes they don’t want it to. Certain stories you tell make me notice things I never had before; they bring me closer to things, but not to you. While we sit in a kitchen where there is no cooking or partying happening, we make ourselves useful talking like we want to know each other. The little details, the hidden parts, are what you tell best. We compare lives, recounting the more interesting hours we’ve lived in a few minutes. All the best pieces get condensed to something very small.
You tell me: “After working at McDonald’s for ten years they give you a gold, often diamond encrusted, McDonald’s ring.” To see one of these rings without knowing that, I’d assume it was just kitsch jewelry, not the end point of working for a decade at an otherwise transient job. To notice details is not an end in itself. Noticing is a far cry from understanding but it shows how things willfully hide their importance. Unassuming, these pieces exist comfortably mute with a knowledge of their own worth. Dedication finds an escape from irony with an unabashed sense of pride.