My new work uses Philip Guston's later paintings, and specifically his palette, to create forms and groupings about the trouble we find ourselves in when we allow populism to succeed. The period Guston created his Nixon series in and the Watergate crisis has resonances with today's political climate and with the workings of the current US administration.
Using media traditionally associated with the domestic - textiles and ceramics - the commentary is not literal or loud. Instead the work acts as an interloper between the internal domestic world and the external one of world politics.
Madeleine Preston is a Sydney based artist and tutor at UNSW Art & Design. She has a Master of Fine Arts from RMIT and is a director of Home@735 Gallery.
Preston works with archival materials including photos, everyday objects and paintings to create installations that suggest alternative histories. Her paintings have developed over more than 20 years from thick impasto surfaces to the current almost watercolour use of oils. In 2014 she undertook an artist residency program run by Lynda Draper at Gymea TAFE. Since then she has continued to work in ceramics. Preston creates rough approximations of sophisticated ancient forms, the work suggests both folk ceramics in their execution and archaeological display when exhibited.
Preston has exhibited widely and recent exhibitions include Octopus 13: on this day alone curated by Glenn Barkley at Gertrude Contemporary, Glazed and Confused curated by Lynda Draper at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Bookmarked at Stills Gallery, and the Glenn Barkley curated TACA Biennial show OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN at Manly Art Gallery and Museum. In November-December 2017 she will undertake a residency at the Art Gallery of NSW's Moya Dyring Cité Studio.
ceramic, felt
80 x 40 cm
Special Commendation Award; Finalist
Judges of the 2017 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize: Djon Mundine OAM (Curator, Writer, Artist and Activist), Roslyn Oxley OAM (Gallerist and arts benefactor) and Alexie Glass-Kantor (Executive Director, Artspace, Sydney and Curator, Encounters, Art Basel | Hong Kong).
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