closer stills and the veil of want
New Zealand artist Peter Madden does not like definitions. According to Madden, ‘Dictionaries are evil because they presume to shore up ambiguity’. To describe his work is to revel in this ambiguous quality, the sheer depth of his pieces and the precision of his technique make most adjectives seem reductive. Madden’s practice revolves around cutting or ‘liberating’ images from old National Geographic magazines and layering them in acutely detailed collages (however, as Tessa Laird rightly declares, ‘To say that Madden cuts up and rearranges photographs from National Geographic magazine is like saying Hendrix played the guitar’.) By mixing acidic-coloured tropical fish, sleek modernist furniture and butterflies, Madden creates a complicated jouissance of contrasting images and colours that make for arresting and visually intriguing artworks that extend beyond mere collage.
Madden’s series of works on display at Ryan Renshaw Gallery show him introducing new elements into his photographic collages—a medium that he has been perfecting and expanding since 1997. One of the most important ways Madden maintains dynamism within his work is through his method of implementing or presenting the collage elements—gluing; affixing images to flat topped pins; wrapping; and perhaps most crucially, trapping his liberated images between sheets of clear perspex. This perspex layering sometimes extends up to five or more sheets, stacked to separate and hold the cut photographs, as well as to generate an important depth of field. This separation allows for an interplay and relationship between different photographs on separate layers (which appear like minute scenes one might see in a Bosch painting). Madden describes his practice as being a ‘game’—and it is in relation to the interplay between images that we should understand this comment. In