Sculpture – Page 2 – Christopher Madden

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 assemblage

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.
Moire effect from mesh and a mirror

Moire effect generated by a mesh on a mirror

Concave mirror, plastic mesh. 8x8x10cm. July 2024

A study of the moiré patterns that are generated when a mesh is placed above a mirror.

The mirror in this study is a concave mirror taken from a bicycle rear view mirror. The mesh is the plastic mesh from a supermarket pack of easy peel oranges.
Assemblage – bicycle saddle and ceramic pot

Ceramic vessel with bicycle saddle assemblage.

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.
Fur in contemporary art

Fur ellipse

Fake fur, card, acrylic. 30 x 42 x 8cm March 2022

At first sight this work looks like a dark ellipse painted onto a blue background. Closer inspection reveals that the ellipse is in fact made of fur and that it protrudes some distance from the flat blue surface.

A close-up detail of the work.

The fur is dark and matt, making its texture quite hard to see without close inspection. As a result most casual observers don’t notice. A close inspection is however rewarded with the realisation of what is being looked at.

This work exhibits my interest in interpreting perception, illusion and expectations.

Optically deceptive artworks in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022. The fur piece is the far one.
Hammers bound together

Hammers bound together

Hammers, shoe laces March 2022

Three hammers bound together with shoe laces. The hammers are different sizes, creating a dynamic visual effect and implying a differential power status between the hammers.

The fact that the hammers are bound together renders them useless as hammers, making them impotent. However, maybe they’re not bound together to reduce their power – maybe they are bound together to create unity. Maybe the price of unity is a reduction in individual power. But is the price of unit a reduction in group power?

The hammers exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022.

The work is a study of power, restraint and impotence. It’s also a nice composition. The inspiration came in my studio when I placed one hammer directly on top of another one (By chance or deliberately? I don’t know).
Contemporary sculpture – pliers and plaster (and paint)

Pliers Piece I

Pliers, plaster, acrylic paint. 12x1815cm. 2020

A sculpture composed of a pair of splayed handyman’s pliers and a painted plastercast of the inside of a coffee filter cone.

Pliers and other handyman’s tools such as hammers and spanners are recurrent features in some of my constructions.

The work is probably influenced by the Arte Povera movement, and the plastercast of the inside of the coffee filter may owe something to artists such as Rachel Whiteread (although I don’t think that she’s known for adding colour to her casts).
Contemporary sculpture – clothes rack stack

Clothes Rack Stack

Commercial clothes racks. 2022

An installation composed of three clothes racks forming a pyramid.

The pyramid of racks is this size purely because I only possess three clothes racks. Given a larger space and a larger number of racks the pyramid can be huge. You may notice in the photo that as well as a pausity of racks the low ceiling in the room mitigates against the construction of monumental artworks.

This is a typical example of a work that almost created itself (I thought of it while I was moving the racks so that I could dry my washing). I have often admired the interplay of the horizontal and diagonal lines in the racks while I was using them for their proper purpose, but it was only recently that the idea of stacking them occurred to me.

This work is probably partly inspired by the art movements of constructivism, dada and arte povera.
Contemporary ceramics – organic cones

Organic cones

Glazed ceramic. 2007 30x30x40cm

A cluster of organic forms, possibly resembling aquatic lifeforms. The small indentations in the top of some of the cones adds to the organic effect. The worm-like appearance of the cones makes them a slightly disturbing.

The cones are hand-rolled clay.
Environmental art

Environmental art – Earth Bin

Contemporary art sculpture/installation. January 2017

I’ve been creating environmental art in one form or another since about 1970. This work is a development of a previous work from the late 1980s.

The work is a sculpture showing how I feel the human race is treating the environment – by putting the planet into the rubbish bin.
The sculpture consists of a standard kitchen waste bin, lined internally with very matte black material and with a back-lit image of the earth at its base. The result is the illusion that by looking into the bin you are looking into outer space as though through a porthole in a spacecraft, with the earth floating in the distance. It’s surprisingly effective.
The kitchen waste bin was deliberately chosen as the reciprocal that contains the earth because of its banality, to emphasise how we are causing environmental damage by depleting the earth’s resources through mundane consumption.

A version of this work was shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022 and was exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, the same year.
Different artists having the same idea

An example of the same concept by different artists.

Drawing. 2019. Photo: Harrison and Wood, Frieze, London. 2022

An example of different artists thinking of the same idea independently.
My cartoon drawing is a joke about text-based art from a book of cartoons that I produced on the subject of contemporary art and humour in 2019 ( See here ).
The photograph is of a sculptural text-based work by Harrison and Wood that was exhibited at Frieze London in 2022.
Shadow rings – contemporary light sculpture featuring cast shadows

Shadow Rings.

Card, acrylic paint, LED light source. 30x15x20cm. 2022.

A light source shining on painted and folded card cut-outs in the form of rings.
The shadows cast by the light shining on the rings form half of each full ring on the base of the artwork.
The video above shows the light turning on and off to show the effect.
An example of contemporary light sculpture. The piece is deliberately low-tech, using a cheap commercial table lamp as a light source and simple folded card.
Procession

Procession.

Wooden spheres,plastic hands. May 2022.

A sculptural piece consisting of toy plastic hands ( sometimes known as finger hands) attached to wooden spheres.
The hands are almost the only anatomical feature possessed by the spheres. This makes their function ambiguous – are they actually hands, or are they feet?Or even wings?
The ‘creatures’ in the procession are quite unsettling. Their lack of anatomical features other than hands gives them the impression that they are crawling clumsily and blindly forward.
Other artworks in this series feature these objects suspended by thread on a mobile. In these works the hands unmistakably also function as wings. In the natural world the wings of birds and bats have evolved from hands (or front feet, which are what hands have evolved from), so the idea of hands being used as wings is far from far-fetched.
This work is partly inspired by my interest in evolutionary science and the natural world, and partly by my interest in the bizarre and the ambiguous.
Political protest art – the Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed

The Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed. Hammer and nails sculpture.

Hammer, nails. This version, May 2022. Original concept, 2010.

This sculpture is partly a metaphor for oppression and rebellion.
The work shows a hammer nailed to a surface by nails.
Part of the concept behind the sculpture is that the hammer is being impaled by the objects that it normally hits.
How did the nails manage to impale the hammer? Were the nails hammered into the hammer by another hammer? In that case the nails are not necessarily a metaphor for the oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressor (the hammer) using their own power, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that’s been overthrown.
The use of handyman’s tools such as hammers, pliers and spanners is a recurring feature of my artwork.

The work in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022
Metamorphosis – recycling in contemporary art

Metamorphosis (from pie containers to insect larvae)

Wood (recycled food containers). 2021.

An assemblage or sculpture fabricated from recycled wooden pie containers.
The pie containers, for Charlie Bigham pies (mainly fish pies with the odd cauliflower cheese in there), are stacked as curved forms suggestive of insect larvae such as caterpillars or grubs.
Insect larvae undergo metamorphosis when they change into the imago or mature form of the insect. Here the pie containers have undergone a similar metamorphosis by turning into the insect larvae.

This work reflects my interest in the natural world and the environment, as well as my concerns for environmental issues caused by human activity (this work being an example of recycling or upcycling of consumer waste).
An example of art made from scrap material. A form of arte povera perhaps.
Unstable construction assemblage

Unstable construction made of G clamps

G clamps. 40x40x40cm (variable). 2021.

A sculpture or assemblage composed of G clamps.
G clamps are usually used for holding work together temporarily, such as when components are being glued together. Here the G clamps are holding on to each other so that they are part of a structure themselves rather than an instrument for creating a structure. The angle of the piece gives the structure a feeling of instability. This could have allusions to the instability of the modern world that we have constructed through our use of industry and technology, where the very means by which we have constructed our world leads to its inherent precariousness, especially now that we are inflicting such serious damage on the environment.
Sculpture composed of expanded polystyrene packaging

Polystyrene Idol

Expanded polystyrene packaging. 35 x 55cm. 2021.

A sculpture fabricated from expanded polystyrene packaging – an example of upcycled art.
Upcycling, or the repurposing of waste or redundant material, is a common phenomenon in art, especially recently since the rise of environmentally orientated art or eco art (and the invention of the word upcycling).
Of course the practice is probably as old as art itself.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice the sculptural qualities of pieces of polystyrene packaging.

I call the work Polystyrene Idol because the shapes of the polystyrene in the piece are suggestive of the carved idols of some cultures. In the context of Western culture such an idol may be seen as an idol linked to the cult of consumerism, especially because the polystyrene is the material that protects consumer goods when they are in trannsit, and it is also the discarded waste material once the consumer goods have been acquired by the purchaser.
Nailed and clamped sculpture

Clamped and nailed

G clamp, nails, wooden sphere. 20 x 20 x 15cm. 2022.

This sculpture or assemblage is almost an accidental artwork.
The nails in the sphere were put there to attach other objects to. The G clamp is there to hold the two halves of the sphere together (It’s composed of two hemispheres glued together.
One of the skills needed in art is the ability to see the unexpected.
Assemblage of wood blocks

Wood block assemblage

2″x2″ wood, acrylic paint. 2022. Height: 12cm, width: variable.

An assemblage of blocks of wood painted very matte black on the sides and bright white on the top, positioned so that they almost suggest a formation, but not quite. Developed from a chess piece that I created, in which similar blocks formed a more regular chess board formation.
This photo was taken at my solo show in the gallery at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall.