Madeline Kidd
Pattern Making
1 November - 2 December 2017
Madeline Kidd’s exhibition, Pattern Making, draws on the philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, who is widely renowned as ‘the inventor of kindergarten’. Kidd uses essential colour in concert with simple shape and forms. Her artistic constructs realise individual moments of the breakthrough into the abstract world, that ‘place’ which Froebel considered to be the very first object of the corollary of art and education. Through her paintings, prints and structures (such as decorated mirrors and shelves), she explores how play is a part of learning and how objects and colours form a foundation of play, and in doing so, assume a higher meaning.
Madeline Kidd’s practice can be defined as the curating of contemporary artworks, representational or abstract, into real and pseudo-domestic settings. The sculptures, paintings, installations and theatrical designs that she produces are conceptualised as ‘set pieces’ or what is known as ‘costume sculpture’. Commonplace and familiar icons of interior decoration, such as paintings, furniture, floral arrangements, fruit plates, and abstract sculptures are appropriated and recreated in her work. Kidd’s work as an art director for film and theatre has had a direct influence on her art practice. In 2016 she exhibited at the Lismore Regional Gallery alongside artist Masato Takasaka, where prints, mirror and shelf works combined to form Playroom, a continuation of Kidd’s work of domestic familiarity reinvented. Other recent exhibitions include Rose coloured glass, The Honeymoon Suite, Melbourne and a solo exhibition at Spring 1883, Sydney. She has curated several exhibitions including Sushichampagnepaintingsculpture, which situated artwork within a domestic space, another theme of her work.
