Peter Madden
A Selection of Works
In my collage practice I search for evocative and enigmatic images, they show themselves in a flash. I remove a central subject then with my hollow page I seek another image to fill the hole. I look to extend the new image into an artform. I find an image that can extend the reading of a picture. Two jugs have a storm forming, I can imagine the perpetual sound such a small storm must make. A dancer unfolds in joy as she becomes interstellar. A lone figure pauses inside his own imagination as an erotic moment is reflected on.
My small sculptures exhibited here look at decisive moments. An asteroid about to crash into a chair (modelled on an electric chair from the American penal system). A floating asteroid on its deadly path is about to change the course of earth’s history. I like how it hovers between a representation and an image, is it massive or just another small rock entering earth’s atmosphere (100 metric tons enter earth’s atmosphere every day). With my book “Air” we can view an art object that instead of having something done to it it has had elements removed. I’ve introduced an absence. Lepidoptera are an indicator species, meaning if they are in trouble and are disappearing from a natural habitat, the said environment is in immediate danger of collapse.
Peter Madden 2022
