Christopher Madden

food

  • Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2026: Interlinked Mints

    Interlinked Mints

    Polo mints, wood, acrylic. 2026. 17 x 3.5 x 6cm

    My work on show in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026.


    A sculpture composed of a sequence of Polo mints on a wooden base.

    The Polo mints are arranged in pairs, with the two mints in each pair interlocked, with each mint passing through the hole in the other.

    The mints are real Polo mints.

    Polo mints are very sculptural in their own right, especially with the excellent typography of the word Polo in relief on them. The mints were originally produced in 1948 by Rowntree in the UK and were based on the design of the US confectionary Life Savers (which Rowntree previously produced in the UK under license).

    The use of confectionary or other types of food in contemporary art is often a comment on consumerism. I don’t think that that applies in this case. Here I think that the prime subject of the work in the transformation on the confectionary into a sculptural form.

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  • Metamorphosis – recycling consumer waste in contemporary art

    Environmental art - contemporary sculpture from waste packaging

    Metamorphosis (from pie containers to insect larvae)

    Wood (recycled food containers). 2021.

    An assemblage or sculpture fabricated from recycled wooden food containers.
    The food 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 consumer waste or.scrap material. A form of arte povera perhaps.

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  • Milk bottle heads – sculpture from recycled rubbish

    Contemporary art - sculpture from recycled rubbish or junk - milk bottle heads

    Milk bottle heads
    Plastic milk bottles, ink. September 2018

    Plastic milk bottles with human heads drawn onto them.
    These heads are an example of art created from rubbish. Their recycled nature is partly an observation on our throw-away consumer culture.
    The bottles are surprisingly head-shaped, reminding me somewhat of various non-Western forms of sculpture. I particularly like the way that the milk bottle handles make very interesting and bizarre noses.
    I’m in the process of making several dozen of them, as their impact is increased as their numbers increase.

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  • Mirror-based artwork – multiple reflections inside a cube creating the illusion of the word “OXO” in infinite regression

    contemporary art infinity mirror cube multiple reflections

    OXO Cube infinity mirror cube

    Mirrors, paper, acrylic. March 2017

    This is a mirror-based artwork that uses the concept of infinity mirrors (which is a phenomenon I first became interested in while I was a student of maths and physics in the early 1970s).
    The work consists of four mirrors forming the vertical walls of a cube, with the mirrored surfaces facing inwards. Each mirror reflects the mirror opposite it, including the reflections in that mirror, so the reflections build up to form infinite reflections (or, more accurately, multiple reflections, as the reflections gradually fade due to light loss).
    Where two mirrors meet in the cube’s corners each mirror reflects the other corner mirror, creating a different set of multiple reflections.

    The design on the cube’s floor forms the abstract image below:

    contemporary mirror OXO Cube base

    In each corner of the cube the abstract images are reflected in the mirrors to appear to form the word “OXO”.
    Each of these words “OXO” is then reflected infinite times in the other mirrors in the cube.
    This artwork is titled “OXO Cube”, as it’s just too good a title to ignore (The artwork is meant to contain an element of humour).

    contemporary art mirror cube

    A low viewpoint looking into the mirror cube, as below, shows the infinity mirror effect at its best.

    contemporary art infinity mirror reflections in cube

    Below: a video of the mirror cube.

    The work is partly the result of my interest in food and consumer packaging in contemporary art.

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  • Environmental art – heads created from discarded milk bottles

    contemporary environmental sculpture from consumer waste - sculptural head created from milk bottles

    Milkman

    Plastic milk bottle, ink    August 2018

    Slightly unsettling heads created from empty plastic milk bottles.

    Like many artists I have a habit of collecting waste and recycling it into works of art.
    The slightly sinister appearance of these heads, drawn as they are on post-consumer waste in the form of discarded plastic milk bottles, can be interpreted as a comment on the fact that we as humans are destroying the environment through (amongst other things) our profligate use of plastic consumer packaging (I’ve been producinng work concerned with environmental issues since the 1970s).
    The fact that the heads also resemble the type of craft-play objects produced by children can be interpreted as alluding to the western world’s current tendency towards a philosophy of consequence-denying pleasure seeking in which the adults in society fail to take responsibility for their actions beyond immediate self-gratification.

    contemporary environmental art sculpture created from consumer waste - heads created from plastic milk bottles

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