New Ceramics by Madeleine Child: Dried Floral Arrangements

"Dried Floral Arrangements: New Ceramics by Madeleine Child" offers a rare opportunity to view a solo exhibition of work by a talented member of the Dunedin community. An award-winning New Zealand artist, Madeleine Child (b. 1959, Sydney, Australia) moved to New Zealand in 1968. She initially completed a Ceramics Certificate at the Otago Polytechnic in 1978, continuing her education in London where she received a BA (Hons) (1990) from the Camberwell School of Art, and a Masters (1992) from the Royal College of Art. In 1993 she enrolled in Advanced Studies 3D at Central St Martins College of Art, graduating in 1994. She has won numerous awards, among these the 2013 Jury Award, Wallace Art Awards, the 2009 Portage Ceramics Premier Award (joint), and the 2000 Sidney Myer Fund Premier Art Award (joint).

On view 5-27 June 2020 at RDS Gallery, 6 Castle Street, her new ceramic series, in the words of Alistair Fox, “can be placed in a long tradition in which the daisy has been used as a floral symbol with rich and sometimes contradictory associations. More complex and resonant in their expressive connotations than they might at first seem. These daisies participate in a show called ‘dried floral arrangements’; as such, they suggest the aftermath of love as much as hopeful expectations of a happy future. This exhibition, then, is truly a manifestation of the extent to which a modern sensibility has intercepted and reinterpreted one of the longest-standing and most revered tropes in our cultural heritage."