Contemporary Art – Page 2 – Christopher Madden

Flight mobile sculpture – hands as wings

Flight.

Wood, plastic. June 2022. Solo exhibition, Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall.

A mobile sculpture consisting of wooden spheres with plastic hands that form wings.

Hands are a recurrent theme in my work, as is flight. I’ve created several works that feature hands as wings, usually in the form of sketches and other drawings.

Using hands as wings is actually far from being far-fetched. The wings of birds and bats both evolved from hands (which is why birds and bats don’t have hands – it’s a choice of one or the other. Angels and fairies have both, but they are made up and are anatomically incorrect). Insect wings evolved along a different route, possibly from heat-gathering flaps or panels (insects being very dependant on the heat of the sun).

The symbolism of flight is linked closely with the concept of freedom. This link can be overstated, I think, especially when we project it onto the natural world. We envy the flight of birds, but birds don’t fly because they are free. Small birds that in theory can fly wherever they please often tend to spend their whole lives in a single place such as an individual tree. Some of them may migrate thousands of miles to reach their chosen tree, but they’ve possibly travelled there from another individual tree in a different part of the world. On top of this, on isolated islands that have no predators birds frequently lose the power of flight, so flying obviously isn’t one of their primary concerns.
Expansion II

Expansion II

Digital animation. 2023

A digital animation composed of layers of expanding and radiating forms.

This work is from a series that explores the generation of complexity from simplicity by the interaction of simple forms to create complex forms.
Architecture as abstract art

Architecture as abstract art.

Photograph. 1st December 2023.

A cropped photograph creating an image that is quite hard to interpret due to the lack of context or visual cues.

The railings help once you’ve realised what they are. It’s a photograph of the steps at Alexandra Palace railway station, London. Due to the cropping of the photograph the steps lose their significance as steps and only the parallel nature of the lines of the steps becomes significant, creating an abstract pattern.
Light art

Light art.

Light box, card, paper. 480x360mm. November 2023.

Light art in the form of a light panel with a collage of cut paper and card.

The illuminated triangular centre of the work is framed by black card with a triangular aperture at its centre. The curved and circular geometric shapes are formed of cut pieces of card or paper. Some of the pieces are cut so that they are not quite perfectly regular. This hopefully gives the work a degree of added dynamism.
Mirror Box Creating Infinite Reflections

Contemporary mirror art. Multiple reflections inside mirror box

Mirrors, paper, card. 2023.

Three mirrors joined to create a triangular box or prism, with the mirror surfaces facing inwards. On the inside bass of the box a number of semicircular pieces of card and paper are arranged so that their reflections create the appearance of complete rings.

Each of the mirrors reflects the other mirrors (and the reflections in the mirrors). The reflections in the mirrors include the reflections of reflections. This would result in an infinite number of reflections if the mirrors were perfectly reflective (and were optically perfect in other ways too), however there is a loss of light with each reflection so the reflections gradually become dimmer and darker.

Below is a video of the sculpture. Because of the nature of the multiple reflections in the mirrors it’s particularly important to see the sculpture from different angles.

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I’ve been interested in mirrors and reflections for most of my adult life. While I was still at school in the late 1960s I ground an eight and a half inch (215mm) parabolic mirror for an astronomical telescope that I constructed. I used the mirror in this early artistic experiment. My first conscious encounter with infinite mirrors was a few years later when I was in a lift (elevator) while at university studying maths and physics. The lift had mirror panels on its walls.
Leaping Stagman

Leaping Stagman

Digital print. 30cm x 21cm 2023.

This work was exhibited in Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery over the summer of 2023.
Contemporary mirror art

Contemporary mirror art. Multiple reflections creating complete rings

Mirrors, wood, card, acrylic. 2023.

Two mirrors joined along their bottom horizontal edges are held at an angle to each other. Placed between the mirrors are three painted card sections of circles. Multiple reflections of the sections of card around the axis of the joined mirrors produce full circles. There are six reflections (or multiple reflections) in the mirrors, creating a full circle composed of seven sections.

A second component of coloured card is lying flat on the surface beside the mirror structure. The shape and colour of this second construction add another dimension to the assemblage as a whole. The fact that this part of the piece is in two colours and that it forms only part of a ring add to the resonance of the structure.

Below is a video of the sculpture. Because of the nature of the multiple reflections in the mirrors it’s particularly important to see the sculpture from different angles.

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Conic construction in a landscape

Conic construction in a landscape

Watercolour and gouache with digital additions. 2023.

A watercolour and gouache painting of a cone in a landscape, with additional features added digitally.
The original watercolour painting was scanned to create a digital file to which additional features were then added in Adobe Photoshop. The digital additions were created as spontaneously as possible, without too much conscious consideration. The results are similar to other works that I have produced using the same process, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. Next time I’ll consciously try to do something different.
The image partly resembles a creature of some sort, maybe with a beak and what may be an eye. If the white blob that may be an eye had a dot inside it, it would obviously be an eye, but it would lose some of its slightly sinister mystery.
Maybe it’s not an eye at all. Maybe it’s a hole in the top of a wigwam. Those straight lines protruding from the top of the cone look a bit wigwamy now I come to look at them.
Photography as abstract art

Photography as abstract art.

Photograph. May 2020. Zennor, Cornwall.

A photograph as abstract art.

I took this photograph because when I looked at the object in the photo in real life I was surprised how much it was transformed by a particular quality of light so that it resembled an abstract artwork.

It’s a photograph of a window in my house.
Drawing from the imagination: Strange clothes, strange propulsion

Drawing from the imagination: Strange clothes, strange propulsion

Digital sketch. 16th July 2023

A quick sketch from the imagination drawn using Procreate on an iPad with an Apple Pencil.

I find that drawing quick sketches with no particular end in mind is an excellent way to open up to new possibilities. Obviously the same themes and styles keep cropping up, but often with minor variations that move the sketches off into different and new directions. That’s the nature of evolution of course – small changes over time gradually end up creating something new.

I’ve drawn quite a few sketches of people or strange creatures that seem to have a wheel instead of legs. Haven’t managed to work out why yet.
Contemporary mirror art – Yellow Ring

Contemporary art, mirror art. Yellow Ring

Mirrors, wood, card, acrylic 2023

A sculpture exploring reflections in mirrors. The sculpture is composed of two mirrors set at angles to each other so that they show the reflections of each other and thus show multiple reflections of objects reflected in them.

Resting on the mirrors is a curved length of yellow card that forms a quarter of the circumference of a circle. Multiple reflections in the mirrors turn the quarter of a circle into a complete circle.

From some viewpoints only part of the circle can be seen, giving the effect that the circle is somehow partly disappearing – a form of optical illusion created because the brain can’t interpret what it is seeing properly.
Snail

Contemporary art print. Snail

Digital photograph. June 2018.

A contemporary art print of an old snail shell on the top of a cylindrical marble plinth. The snail shell has lost all of its colour due to its age and the amount of time that it had spent outside in the elements. It is now almost indistinguishable from the marble of the plinth on which it rests.

The photograph is taken from a small sculpture that I created from a snail shell found in my garden (It’s the shell of a common garden snail, cornu aspersum).

One of the things that I like about this piece is the fact that the old snail shell is incredibly fragile and light while the marble is hard and heavy, yet they both look remarkably similar on the surface. It is a piece partly concerned with the nature of superficial appearance. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, with all of those curved and rounded forms.

The fragile snail shell evokes feelings about the fragility of nature and the environment in the time of the ongoing environmental crisis.
Anthropomorphic sculpture

Anthropomorphic sculpture from found objects.

Mole wrench and oil can cap. October 2023.

A mole wrench and an oil can cap create an anthropomorphic sculpture suggesting an embracing couple.

The sculpture came about when I was about to put teak oil on my kitchen worktop, which was something I’d been putting off for the previous five years. The cap of the tin of teak oil was rusted in place due to lack of use and I had to take it off using a mole wrench. Holding the resulting wrench and cap combination instantly I sensed the potential for it to be a work of art in some way, partly because the oil can’s cap resembled an eye when the light struck it. At first I thought that the assemblage perhaps resembled a fish, but after a bit of turning it round in my hands I saw human forms emerge.

This is a good example of the way that people can interpret objects differently to the nature of the objects themselves. I believe that our brains interpret things based on a hierarchy of significance. The brain sees something and then scans down a list of likely possibilities for what the thing is, with highly significant things at the top of the list. At the very top of the list is ‘human being’. Very much lower down the list, if it’s on the list a all, is ‘mole wrench’. When you see a mole wrench in a tool box you automatically go straight to the ‘mole wrench’ item way down your brain’s list, because the context in which you see the wrench is strongly suggestive that it is indeed a mole wrench that you’re looking at. However, in the context-free setting of the photo above your brain has to work harder and has to consult its built-in list of possibilities, at the top of which is ‘human being’. The wrench possesses something of the shape of a human form, and thus the connection is made. The fact that the wrench is standing in a way that no mole wrench in the real world could do without support helps to amplify the effect.
Bicycle Saddle

Ceramic vessel with bicycle saddle.

Sculpture. 2021.

A ceramic pot with a bicycle saddle. The bicycle saddle is attached to a conventional bicycle seat pillar which is inserted into the narrow opening at the top of the ceramic vessel.

In the context of the sculpture the shape of the bike seat automatically evokes the form of an animal head.

Whenever the words bicycle seat, animal head and art are mentioned in the same sentence the name of Pablo Picasso and his 1942 work, Bull’s Head, inevitably come to mind. But we mustn’t let the great man’s work prevent the rest of us from using the same idea. He probably wasn’t the first person to think it up anyway, just the most famous. Remember, it was him who said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”

In my sculpture the bicycle saddle doesn’t only suggest an animal head. Something about its shape also evokes the concept of a sail or of some form of crest shaped modern architectural structure.

Below is a variation of the sculpture where I’ve cleaved the saddle firmly to its animal head incarnation by adding a pair of headphones. The headphones have the pleasing effect of looking like a weird pair of eyes as well as a pair of headphones. The idea of adding the headphones came to me simply because there was pair of headphones lying on the floor next to the sculpture.
Doll

Sculpture. Found objects. 2023

An anthropomorphic sculpture made of found objects.

The doll’s head was found buried in my garden and the empty custard carton was found in my kitchen.

The custard carton has been squeezed to extract every last bit of custard from inside. It was a simple matter to create a ready-made sculpture by attaching the doll’s head to the cap of the carton, especially as the head was rather sinisterly only the front of the head, thus it possessed a convenient rim that could be gripped by the carton’s screw cap.

With the doll’s head attached, the custard carton is instantly transformed from being a crumpled piece of consumer waste into a doll’s body or a baby’s body. A quite disturbing body at that.

The interpretation of the carton as a body in this sculpture is the result of the phenomenon of pareidolia, which is the tendency to see significant forms where they don’t exist (Faces in clouds and such-like). The presence of the doll’s head helps of course. Art, especially modern and contemporary art, is hugely reliant on pareidolia, as it allows a circle with a couple of dots inside it to become a human face.
Seeing the world from an unusual angle

On the escalator. Seeing the world from an unusual angle.

Video. 45 seconds. May 2023

A video of people going down an down escalator at a London Underground station. I was going up the up escalator.

The video was shot at an angle so that the sloping architecture of the escalator occupied the horizontal plane in the video.

One of the metaphorical points of the video is the idea of looking at the world from unusual angles as a way of getting away from conventional ways of thinking and of conventional perception. It’s also quite humorous, which is something I often strive for.

Tilting the world to unusual angles is a concept I’ve pursued multiple times. An early example was in the early 1970s when I toyed with the idea of writing a short story about an isolated community that lived in a town half way up a very steep hill. The hill was so big that the people couldn’t see the top or the bottom, so they didn’t realise that they actually lived on a slope. All they knew was that there was a strange force (gravity) that meant that objects were only stable when they were at a particular angle to the ground and orientated in a particular direction. And that walking towards one side of town (uphill) was quite hard work, while walking in the opposite direction (downhill) was easy.
Circles and rays

Circles and rays

Digital. 2022

A print taken from a digital animation of expanding circles and rays.
The work is related to my interest in both art and science, and is inspired by the concept of the expansion of the universe.
I’ve been interested in both art and science most of my life. In fact in my youth (over fifty years ago) my ambition was to be an astronomer. I even constructed my own astronomical telescope, including grinding the parabolic mirror, when I was a teenager.
Environmental art: watercolour tree

Watercolour: Tree

Watercolour on paper. 2023

A watercolour painting from the imagination, depicting a tree in a sinister landscape. The dark foreboding atmosphere of the painting is partly to reflect the atmosphere of the ongoing environmental crisis and partly to reflect the atmosphere of thinking about it.

The tree looks as though it has uprooted itself and is trying to get away from its environment by using its roots as limbs. Alternatively, maybe the ground around the tree’s roots has been washed way as part of environmental degradation (perhaps by floods caused by climate change or by people’s exploitation of the land), literally sweeping away or undermining the foundations of a sustainable environment. And what are those objects next to the tree?
Stilt Walker

Stilt Walker

Digital. 2023

A digital sketch of a person on stilts. The stilts have wheels.

Stilt walkers have been an occasionally recurring theme in my work since about 1975.
Surreal sea creature. Drawing from the imagination.

A surreal sea creature drawn from the imagination.

Digital image. 6th May 2023

A bizarre sea creature created digitally in Procreate on an iPad. The shape of the sea creature is based on the number six, as the image was created as part of an exercise in which I sketched several images on my iPad based on the numbers between zero and nine. The concept behind the exercise was that by having to take into account the restraints of including a number in each image I would be forced to work with forms or shapes that I might not think up straight from my imagination.

When creating the sketch I was attempting to produce a bizarre, weird and sinister image. The result looks as though it owes a debt to surrealism, dada and the symbolists.