Madeleine Preston

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Bad Mannerism brings together artists ...who explore... a non-conventional approach to figuration.'Bad Mannerism' examines the potential subversiveness of a Mannerist approach to making, in which artifice and exaggeration are employed as a playful critique of 'virtuosity', especially in relation to idealisations of the body. This reflects a growing tendency amongst various artistic traditions to eschew naturalism in favour of the affective impact of 'eccentric figuration’. Artists in 'Bad Mannerism' include Chris Dolman, Lynda Draper, Chelsea Lehmann, & Bruce Reynolds.

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My father wrote lists all his life. He kept many of them. The work here represents a very small part of a series in progress realising a visual response to his written lists.

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The paintings here represent a selection of recent work including a series about domestic bourgeois interiors. The thinly applied oil on paper renders the image is often difficult to read with the subjects receding from view. The work depicts exteriors and interiors that suggest through the application of paint and use of line a hesitant anxious culture.

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Propositional work created as part of a 3 month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The work concentrates on the decorative elements of palaces and galleries that often contain the objects of cultures that have been colonised. The obvious wealth of the galleries the objects of other worlds are displayed in has been extracted from the countries colonised, wealth taken not given. This residency was assisted by a grant from the Australia Council and the National Association for the Visual Arts.

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This series uses Philip Guston's later paintings,specifically his pallette 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 resonates with todays political climate and the workings of the current US administration. Using media traditionally associated with the domestic - textiles and ceramics - the commentary is not literal or loud. The work acts as an interloper between the internal domestic world and the external one of world politics.

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Ancient modernism is a response to seeing some of the key works of modernism in a recent residency in Paris. Often the works in the major galleries would show their age with some paintings yellowing, fading or cracking. I wanted to make work that reflected a sense of modernisms antiquity through hand built forms and broken surface treatment. The forms do not manifest the precision of pure geometry and the surfaces with their faded glaze and obscured patterns speak more of decoration than revolution. The wall works create the illusion of form through colour.

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The work in The Tanagras Archive are based on the Louvre’s Tanagras collection. On their unearthing, these Greek ceramics were coveted by France’s bourgeoisie as affordable symbols of wealth and taste. The paintings in Tanagras Archive show bourgeois interiors where either meals or celebrations take place. This iteration of the archive delves into the often complained about (by artists)desire of the collector for a work of art to 'match the colour of the couch' did the work or the interior come first?

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Working with 10 other artists I curated and made work for Stuck in the Mud a show based on early 20th Century Russian agitprop. Mimicking different revolutionary art and craft objects the work stretched definitions of craft & art. Artists included Connie Anthes, Glenn Barkley, Amanda Bromfield, Holly Macdonald, Rachael McCallum, Eloise Rankine and Madeleine Preston-current & past members of Sydney ceramics collective kil-n-it. Also exhibiting are Katy B Plummer with textile works, Ashley Scott with sound works, and Kuba Dorabialski and Bev Shroot with video works.

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The work in The Tanagras Archive are based on the Louvre’s Tanagras collection. On their unearthing, these Greek ceramics were coveted by France’s bourgeoisie as affordable symbols of wealth and taste. The paintings in Tanagras Archive show bourgeois interiors where either meals or celebrations take place. Figures often appear ghostly, referencing a culture where gourmandising takes precedence over social and political issues. The works in the archive are anxious faded signs of all that is obscured by polite dinner conversation.

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The drawings Rodin’s chicks #2 and Defaced is based on the Tanagras figurines. The Tanagras clothing reflects the fashion of the period, which is placed at 300BC. When the figures went on the market in France in the 19th century artists Rodin bought a large number and they had a significant impact on his work. Unlike oil painting and ceramics that can take a long time to create, small drawings like these can maintain the momentum of their creation.

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The Darlinghurst Eats its Young collaborative film project began with Michael Filocamo in 2013 and shooting occurred in November 2016. To date a trailer and initial sound design has occurred and one screening of materials associated with the project and shoot formed the exhibition in February 2017 at 55 Sydenham. The flim is in currently in post production.

OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN explored ceramics present currency within the art world and the reasons why it is of interest to artists. OUSD excavates this interest and brings together artists, some of whom have long careers with ceramics stretching back decades, and others whose engagement with it has irrevocably changed the way they work, what they make and how they make it. The exhibition included the work of Stephen Baxter, Stephen Benwell, Angela Brennan, Lynda Draper, Trevor Fry, Emily Hunt, Rupert Jack, Rachael McCallum, Sharon Muir, Jenny Orchard, Dawn Vachon and my ceramic installation Little Deaths

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Don’t Look Back looks at how the past is suggested by small gestures and often rewritten by institutional methods of display. The paintings were undertaken during a Firstdraft Studio Residency Program in 2012. Don’t Look Back uses family slides and photos, over saturated cheap postcards, and everyday objects to create and imply domestic histories. This approach to the past is a major part of ongoing exploration of the relationship between the image and object, the past and audience.

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The paintings and drawings here were made during a one Bathurst Regional Gallery one month residency at Haefliger's cottage in the central western former gold mining town in NSW.

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Affiliated Text, Ryan Renshaw, X Arts Projects, Chrissie Cotter & Gaffa My recent work ranges from large and small scale photographic installations including Darlinghurst Eats its young, an analogue version of a facebook page in a shop window; a history of a hidden modernist movement for Kandos for Cementa13, and most recently vinyl agitprop as part of Dispatch - Brisbane's Current Projects & Ryan Reshaw's Windowbox program.

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My sculptures draw on traditional forms of Greek and early Western European amphoras and religious objects and are hand built using clay and more recently felt. My limited training in 3D ensures the final works cannot be copies instead only suggesting the originals.

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The grid collages were made in the US in 2008. The collage and white ink show a shift that reflects of my ongoing interest in the printed photographs role in historic "corrections" of events.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Celebrating artist books in all their forms, from handcrafted one-offs to self-published photobooks, sculptural creations and vintage punk fanzines, Bookmarked was a curated group exhibition that allowed visitors to get lost between the pages. Bookmarked featured a display of nearly 50 books on special loan from the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive - the only Archive of photobooks from this region in the world. My work in Bookmarked included a re-iteration of my Darlinghurst Eats its Young project.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY The Gymea TAFEs artist in residency program initiated by artist Lynda Draper has culminated in a show at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery with the 23 artists who participated in the program. Artists in Glazed and Confused are David Capra, Emily Hunt, Joan Ross, Chris Dolman, Mikala Dwyer, Connie Anthes & Justin Cooper, Harriet Body, Leahlani Johnson, Paul Williams, Peter Sharp, Sarah Contos, Madeleine Preston, Jodie Whalen, Glenn Barkley & NOT, Josie Cavallaro, Karen Black, Frank Nowlan, Marc Etherington, Rosie Deacon and Giselle Stanborough, and Tom Polo.

Artists often attempt to represent human beings, either through an internal feeling or a visual copy. But what does it mean to represent a person? Likeness explores the ways in which art tries to capture the nature of a person and communicate physical nature. Artists include: Bronwyn Watson, Ilona Nelson, Madeleine Preston, Anthony Romagnano, Peter Cave, Michael Vale, Adam Stone, Tai Snaith, Celeste Chandler as well as works from the Town Hall Gallery Colleciton.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Curated by Glenn Barkley, On this day alone explores the ways that eight Australian and international artists, most of whom are not normally considered photographers, employ photography within their practice using photography as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, highlighting how photography can be both research material and final object. The exhibition identifies the unique nature of the medium of photography, showing how despite its fleeting temporality, a photograph’s meaning and significance can persist and morph over time.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Inspired by plan drawers acquired by artist Connie Anthes, Low Relief explores shallow space & its relation to mapping place, time & ideas of perception. 20 artists responded to a drawer with its original label intact. Artists: Matthew Allen, Sarah Breen Lovett, Catherine Cassidy, Criena Court, Michaela Gleave, Sarah Goffman, David Haines, Janet Haslett, Greg Hodge, Leahlani Johnson, Anna Kristensen, Abbas Makrab, Noel McKenna, Ian Millis, Eric Niebuhr, Peter Nelson, Madeleine Preston, Peter Sharp, Floria Tosca, and Paul Williams. Curated by Connie Anthes.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY There is a Russian expression ‘the future is known, its the past that’s always changing’ How people remember time and place is often determined by fragments. Individuals remember their part in the whole. Often that part is remembered to suit the present and changes over time. By bringing people from a specific time and place together The future is known was an opportunity to bring together some of those fragments into a temporary present that will again feed and change the past. The show was part of my residency at Firstdraft’s Depot Studios.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Installations by fourteen artists and architects exhibited throughout a Forest Lodge terrace. Curated by Sarah Nolan, director of Branch Gallery, Bunkered explored future living possibilities, issues and interpretations of climate change. The artists who exhibited at Bunkered were: Aaron Anderson, Lisa Andrew, Sarah Breen Lovett, Kuba Dorabialski, Kath Fries Yvette Hamilton, Anna Horne, Rachael McCallum, Sarah Nolan, Office Feuerman, Katy B Plummer, Madeleine Preston, Marlene Sarroff, and Lotte Schwerdtfeger. Video stills from video by Michael Filocamo commissioned by Sarah Nolan.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Aerogramme is a continuation of my nostalgic installation project. The installations that comprise this series have included an archival element, often a photograph or text. These archival elements are suggestive of an ideal time and place; one that is just out of reach. For Mailbox 141 in Melbourne's Flinders Lane the mailboxes are filled with alternating blue and red gells with the aerogramme pattern above the box doors to suggest another way of communicating, now long gone.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & VIEW GALLERY Silvija Lomanaite and Madeleine Preston collaborated on the creation of the sculptural facade a four storey car park in the Western Sydney suburb of Glenfield. The concept emphasises the notion of speed on the two-dimensional surface. The facade is 25 m long, and 9m high and made out of 54 individual panels. The panels were fabricated in in China and shipped to Australia and assembled on site. The carpark was officially opened by Kristina Keneally, the then State Premier, on September 3rd 2010.

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Darlinghurst Eats its Young - Redux was held at Sawtooth Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. The show was a reinterpretation of the original exhibition held at Sedition in 2010. The exhibition included large scale projections, and documentation of the Facebook responses to the photos from the Darlinghurst eats its Young show. Click on image to view gallery.

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The photos that made up the exhibition Snapshot:Darlinghurst Eats its young - part of the Left Coast Festival - came from several different sources including from four people who agreed to sharing their snapshots of themselves and their friends from inner Sydney in the 1980s. The photos exhibitied showed a pre digital version of an almost disappeared city. A Sydney of cheap housing; aSydney yet to be gentrified. For all the photos from the exhibition go to the Darlinghurst eats its Young page, to see the installation click on the picture to view all images in this gallery.