@ Bredgade Kunsthandel.
24 May- 23 June 2018.
Photographs © Annegrete Davis, Ian Mahaffy & Louise Madsen.

Nervous system, 2018 and Surface appearance, 2018
…Colour and identity continue to inform my practice and for this exhibition it is through the fluid nature of both colour and porous, temporary materials such as paint, salt, tape and metal – opposing desires play out.

The specks of browns rust interrupt the polite pastels by bleeding into various surfaces overlaid with salt. The surface bears the processes and the markings of having to negotiate the changing conditions of their environment.

The making and materiality is embedded in the tactile and the work is mostly held together by placement and proximity. It is as it resists an urge to be ‘pinned down’ by placing and displacing itself, as the materials spills over, rubs of or is left behind. Still it is within the rich language and expanded field of textile art that I unfold my practice and artistic kinship, even when I choose not to use of my woolen fibers and fabrics as, it is the case, for this exhibition.

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2017 January 9-12 > FBA Futures 2017
@ Mall Galleries, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London.

Display, 2016 and Top, 2016
For the FBA Futures 2017 – group exhibition two works called Display and Top will be exhibited. The works are from 2016 and made from a range of material such as MDF, Wood, Plaster, Polystyrene balls, PVA, Perspex sheets, Aqua gel Balls, Acrylic & Poster paint, Polyester film.

While the language of design and minimalism is a point of departure, the works more temperamental nature engages the uncertainty and complexity of everyday life. The seductive combinations of often disparate materials tries to subvert their own haptic qualities in a way that is at once alluring and destabilizing.

The works demonstrate an investigative approach to how we encounter objects and are essentially an examination of intimacy and surface and the various ideas these can provide in regard to an understanding of the world, our place in it and the materiality which embody all of us.

2016 November 28th – December 1st.
Group exhibition @ Mori+Stein Gallery, The Flying Dutchman, London

Interior, 2016.
This work is investigating transitions within the everyday – going from one state of mind to another. Not as an experiment of thought more as an activity initiated also within the body by its movement and activities, something very practical and basic.

Our physical separation can enable us to reconnect, while preserving some traces of the moments past. This movement implies a certain flexibility and overlap, where we acquire a sort of material quality ourselves. Letting us join in the possibilities, the freedom of becoming, before we again find ourselves settled into a much clearer position, at once more limited and more refined.

By trying to uncover moments where the work can take on certain lightness and transparency through its materials, while remaining solid – somehow held together by arrangement and proximity. Holding on, keeping things together while maintaining the divide between desire and disappointment somewhat translucent and flexible. In search of gentleness and understanding by accepting a softer focus on what is.

Return > work documentation

2016 September 28th – November 4th: > Touch me not
@ Goldsmiths Textile Collection & the Constance Howard Gallery, London.

: Press release
‘Touch me not’­ – The Skin Ego (1989), Didier Anzieu

It is a great pleasure to announce the 2016 winner of the Christine Risley Award as BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate, Louise Madsen.

In the words of guest judge, Jennifer Harris (Deputy Director, the Whitworth, Manchester), ‘her sculptural pieces demonstrate a profound material sensibility that aligns them with the kind of work that is being produced as part of the “material turn” that so much international art has taken in recent years’.

Madsen’s work on exhibition at the Constance Howard Gallery is a collection of experimental pieces that demonstrate an investigative approach to how we encounter objects. Working with materials that shift, melt, cut, harden, spread and absorb, Madsen explores surfaces of internal and external change. Her seductive combinations of often disparate materials subvert their own haptic qualities in a way that is at once alluring and destabalising.

‘It is most often the materials’ qualities of being too familiar giving way to the them becoming increasingly odd or even alien as I focus on them, that attracts, puzzles and provides me with a nervous energy’ (Louise Madsen).

The use of salt and sugar is reoccurring in Madsen’s work. She is drawn to them as materials that defy boundaries in their appearance both inside and outside the body and their simultaneous necessity for survival and potential toxicity. She appropriates them into her sculptural language, transforming their material qualities into something quite different from the domestic substances that we know. For the exhibition at the Constance Howard Gallery, Madsen will create a new work on site, engaging with the structure of the space through an installation of Sellotape and salt.

In making her candy-coloured merino wool domes, the artist sculpts with a lightness of touch that allows for their ethereal existence. Resisting the need to bind the fibres in a traditional felting process, she taps into what she describes as the ‘unsettled nature of objects’ and alludes to a freedom of existence that ‘does not necessarily lead to exclusion or inclusion but places …my objects outside both – somewhat separate, to be easily accepted and embraced but also dismissed’ (Louise Madsen).

With an approach to making and materiality that is both embedded in the tactile whilst resisting any tendency to be ‘pinned down’, Madsen is developing a rich language which resonates with a long history of material expression and what Jennifer Harris refers to as ‘the productive indeterminacy of contemporary art textiles’.

The Christine Risley Award is an annual cash prize awarded by the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & the Constance Howard Gallery to a graduating Goldsmiths BA student for outstanding work relating to textiles, in memory of Christine Risley.

Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery
> Textile Collection website

2016 Juni 16-20th: > Bittersweet
Degree show, BA Fine Art @ Goldsmiths – University of London.

: A few words
I am interested in how objects inhabit space, how we encounter them and each other in the most direct and superficial way, which can hopefully also offer an opportunity to access something denser.

The more unsettled nature of things and objects suggests a great amount of freedom but it can also reveal something difficult about embracing and managing external and internal change. The freedom not to be pinned down does not necessarily lead to exclusion or inclusion but places some of my objects outside both – somewhat separate, to be easily accepted and embraced but also dismissed. And in this underexposed state of things you might risk generating touch followed by satisfaction instead of a much-desired imagination and Self-reflective intimacy.

It is most often the qualities of being too familiar; giving way to the materials becoming increasingly more odd or even alien when focused on that both attract, puzzle and provide me with a nervous energy. And I consider the oddness as the estranged – once familiar part that can no longer be recognized and is therefore considered alien. Something most evident in my use of salt and sugar as materials that are literally found inside and outside the body; being essential with the risk of causing health damage or becoming toxic when absorbed in vast quantities. And as most of my materials they are both quite malleable but also tricky and at times traitorous by constantly shifting, melting, cutting, hardening, spreading and absorbing other stuff as well as me when finding myself in close proximity.

Being present, embracing the constant shifts in surroundings and self by trying to inhabit the ‘right’ amount of ‘space’ – leaving some unoccupied for others, seem to be a constant challenge in my work and life, which has become one of the important themes in the presented degree show work.

What I wrote while making most of the work presented in the Degree show
> DissertationExtimacy.pdf

: Current

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