Peter Madden: Escape from Orchid City
Peter Madden: Escape from Orchid City
8 October 2006 – 28 January 2007
Principal Sponsor: 
Auckland-based artist Peter Madden transforms the gallery space into a complete environment with an installation developed especially for City Gallery Wellington. Familiar to Wellington audiences through his inclusion in the exhibition Telecom Prospect 2004: New Art New Zealand, Madden creates magical 3D universes cut from books, magazines and encyclopaedias—the familiar, yet contextually loaded National Geographic magazine is a favourite. His constructed realms conjure up complex cycles of death, co-dependence and transformation. New constellations of beasts, buildings and amorphous substances become aligned. Both bleak and intensely jubilant, Madden’s baroque and elaborate fictions confront us with fragments of the real, melded into potential ecological melt-downs, cosmopolitan super novas. This installation considers the poetics of the museum, our understanding of the frailty of nature and how we seek to order, classify and code the world around us.
Peter Madden was born in 1966, studied Bachelor of Visual Arts, Auckland Institute of Technology, Auckland (1992 – 95), and Masters of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University, Auckland (2002 – 04). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including in 2005 Uncanny, Artspace, Auckland; Snake Oil, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, in 2004 Manoeuvre, St. Paul St. Gallery, Auckland, Downtown Frown, Special, Auckland, In Flower, Pataka Porirua, Remember New Zealand, Sao Paulo Biennale, San Paulo, Brazil. Recent solo or collaborative projects include in 2006 The Deep End (with Sam Sampson), te tuhi – the mark, Pakuranga Auckland, in 2005 Silk Cuts and in 2004 Forever Present, both at Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland. Peter Madden lives and works in Auckland.
A City Gallery Wellington exhibition, curated by Sarah Farrar.