Artwork Information

Sue Gardiner writes of Peter Madden: "In his secret and possibly idealist worlds there is a marriage between danger, romanticism, strangeness, reason and sentiment... the fear of catastrophe is always delicately balanced by beauty." Madden's sentimental surrealism recalls the work of Joseph Cornell. In Ram Mount a kitschy plastic animal head, a trophy on a heraldic wall plaque, has been feminised and gothicised with the addition of long eyelashes, blackened eyes and black tears - it's a little Marilyn Manson. No horns are visible, seemingly usurped by a crown of nesting trompe l'oeil butterflies. These images have been cut from encyclopedia plates and folded to resemble real butterflies, although alternative texts on their undersides give the game away. (Snake Oil, 2005)