Christopher Madden

assemblage

  • Last Cigarette – a surreal assemblage.

    Surrealist dada contemporary sculpture involvinng pareidolia - cigarette and shoe last

    Last Cigarette. Found object sculpture.

    Shoe last, cigarette, lamp base. May 2018

    A surreal or dada found object sculpture made from a cobbler’s shoe last with a cigarette inserted into the circular hole in the last that is designed to accommodate a handle. The last is mounted on a lamp stand.

    The sculpture utilises the human sensory condition known as pareidolia, the interpretation of shapes as human faces, to create a surreal head. Pareidolia is essential for the interpretation of a lot of art, especially art in which faces are merely suggested by, say, a few strokes of a paintbrush. In some art pareidolia is actually a curse though – think of the number of abstract images that are ruined when you see an unintentional face in them.
    The sculpture’s title, Last Cigarette, utilises the human tendency to reinterpret words to create puns – in this case the word ‘last’ referring to the wooden cobbler’s last, meaning that the cigarette is the last’s last cigarette.

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  • Hammer and nails sculpture – a study of oppression and rebellion

    Political contemporary art about oppression and rebellion using hammer and nails

    The Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed. Hammer and nails sculpture

    Hammer, nails, plank. June 2015.

    A sculpture composed of a hammer nailed to a plank of wood.
    The hammer is being empaled by the objects that it normally hits.
    This can be interpreted as a metaphor for oppression and rebellion, and it’s also a study in irony.
    How did the nails come to be impaling the hammer? Were the nails hammered into place by another hammer? In this case the nails may not be the downtrodden oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressor using their own power, but are possibly the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer they’ve empaled.

    Other versions of this piece have the hammer on a horizontal surface, such as on the top of a plinth, while further iterations use different numbers of nails. The vertical version shown here is in some ways disturbing because the vertical configuration gives more of an impression of the hammer being violently empaled rather than simply nailed down to the spot. It is also disturbingly suggestive of a crucifixion in Christian iconography.

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