Bird Projects 2014-ongoing

Madeleine Kelly Spectra of birds 2014-15
 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 40 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery. Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA
Spectra of birds 2014-15
 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 40 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery. Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA

This project is an ongoing diary of sorts. In these sculptures painted with encaustic wax, abstract images of birds primarily spotted in Australia are squeezed or trapped into the rectilinear architecture of empty Tetra Paks. The resulting expressionist distortions – angular in shape as determined by the cartons – are half bird and half cultural object, suggesting the continual commodification of nature, a world gradually destroying itself, and the transformation of rubbish. In capitulating to the cartons’ open spouts, the birds embody the phantasmatic property of everyday materials replete with associative meanings of myth and consumerism. Two modes of identity – birds/cartons and art / consumer material – are sustained simultaneously in a single object.

Madeleine Kelly Barren Grounds 2015 Encaustic on cardboard with paper 12 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 9 x 9cm x 23; installed dimensions variable
Barren Grounds 2015 Encaustic on cardboard with paper 12 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 9 x 9cm x 23; installed dimensions variable

From an art-historical perspective, the planes of colour recall the work of Color Field painter Ellsworth Kelly who attributes his minimal colour abstractions and the titles of his works to birdwatching as a young boy with his grandmother. Yet, in contrast to the restraint of formalist colour field painting, these birds might be said to return abstraction to its counterpart in nature, producing effects whereby the different permutations of colour and combinations of form embrace diversity, visual analogy and the aesthetic quality of these remarkable animals. The category depends on the intersection of birds that are seen and are therefore made, but their squashed states also suggest a crisis – those endangered, betrayed or disappeared.

Leipzig birds 2016-17 Encaustic  on cardboard with paper 23 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable
Birds of the D’Aguliar Range 2017 Encaustic  on cardboard with paper 14 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 30 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable. Collection, University of Queensland Art Gallery
Madeleine Kelly Pelagic Birds 2017
Pelagic birds 2017, Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 23 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Photograph Bernie Fischer.​​
Madeleine Kelly Canberra Birds: Cute craft for the archive of painting 2018-19 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text. 17 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable
Canberra Birds: Cute craft for the archive of painting 2018-19 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text. 17 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable
GOMA QLD publication.