Christopher Madden

abstract art

  • Art in the Environment, Cornwall

    contemporary art in the environment, intervention in the landscape or land art, St Ives, Cornwall

    Art in the environment

    Coloured cord on a granite boulder, Zennor, Cornwall. 2017

    I’ve been producing art dealing with environmental concerns since the 1970s.

    The simplicity of construction of this piece is important. The observer will hopefully notice the almost total lack of endeavour required to create the work, while also noticing the (hopefully) relatively high aesthetic payoff as a result of that endeavour.

    A lot of land art and other art in the environment strive to use only natural ingredients in the composition of the art, good examples being the work of Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. This work however consciously uses artificial material in the form of nylon paracord.

    In the work the placing of brightly coloured plastic into the environment refers partly to humanity’s imposition of artificiality onto the natural world. This is partly a message about the despoiling of the environment by our endeavours. The fact that the nylon cord has been simply laid on the boulder (which took the effort of a whole three minutes) helps to reinforce this message, as the cord acquires qualities associated with the detritus of our instant gratification throw-away consumer culture. The fact that the cord is plastic reinforces this further.  However, the brightly coloured plastic actually looks quite pleasing on the rock, so the work is also saying that humanity’s imposition of artificiality onto the environment may have a positive side to it, at least to us (but also that just because something looks nice doesn’t necessarily mean that it is).

    In fact, where would we be without the artificiality that we impose on the environment? Hence some of the ambiguity in this piece.

    The rock is on low heathland behind my house at Rosemorran, Zennor, near St Ives, Cornwall.

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  • Nought and cross. Geometric abstract art

    contemporary art abstract geometric design

    Nought and cross.

    2017

    A digitally created geometric abstract work consisting of diagonals and circles.
    In this work I was chiefly concerned with the effect of creating discontinuous diagonals. The circle helps to focus the attention onto the centre of the image, where all of the action is taking place, as well as adding a degree of three-dimensionality and formal variation to the image.

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  • Abstract geometric sculpture

    abstract modern sculpture - geometric forms from found objects

    Right Angle – abstract geometric sculpture

    Wood, red and blue acrylic paint. August 2017

    It’s hard to tell how big this sculpture is from this photograph.

    It could be a couple of metres tall. In fact it’s closer to five centimetres, as the piece is created from lengths of 2×2 wood (two inches by two inches). The work has a strange relationship with scale. It’s small, but it could be big. 

    At it’s actual size this sculpture looks as though it’s happy at the size that it is, while somehow containing the spirit of a larger sculpture within itself. In some ways it gives the impression of being a large object that is somehow being perceived as being small, as though viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

    As I mentioned, this work is composed of two pieces of two by two wood. This is a common size of wood sold in long lengths in timber yards for use in general construction projects. This sculpture came about when I picked up two short offcuts of wood from a different project, that each had been cut at 45 degrees at one end, and placed them on a work surface on their angled faces. They instantly acquired a dynamic and vital presence.  Due to the manner in which they rested at an angle each piece looked as though it was embedded in the surface with part of its form submerged.

    One of the things I like about this work is that it is made from extremely simple components – two pieces of wood from a builders’ merchants and a bit of red and blue acrylic paint. Yet it doesn’t look like a work created in the spirit of found objects or ‘detritus art’ in which the work is often deliberately engineered to emphasise its origins in the flotsam and jetsam of contemporary consumer culture (Artists such as Philidda Barlow, whose work I like greatly, and Abraham Cruzvillegas come to mind as good exponents of this genre). The bright red and blue primary colours of the sculpture help, as found object sculpture is often the colour of rubbish. In fact this sculpture could almost be mistaken for a tiny example of the highly engineered works that are quite common in modernist sculpture.

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  • Dark Cone – pencil drawing from the imagination (with ink additions)

    contemporary art pencil drawing - cone - geometric form in landscape

    Dark Cone
    Pencil drawing with ink additions on paper. June 2017

    A pencil sketch from the imagination of a dark cone set in a featureless landscape.
    The slightly blurred quality of the pencil marks in this drawing combined with the sharper and darker ink lines create an unsettling atmosphere in the image.

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