Select Portfolio – Madeleine Teresa Kelly Artist

Invitation for Madeleine Kelly the first killing of a butterfly that depicts Amalie Dietrich entangled in her lies

May 21, 2026 In

The First Killing of a Butterfly, Künstlerhaus Bethanien 2026

The Lies (detail) 2026
Pigment, binder, acrylic and oil on polyester
150 x 110 cm

MADELEINE KELLY

The First Killing of a Butterfly

Even before you enter, you can see the first pair of wings. The deconstructed birds from the painting Butcher Bird (2026) guide you into the space, while the outline of a mounted butterfly rises up to the side. The title of the exhibition, The First Killing of a Butterfly, sets the tone.

A line of abstract birds form a diagram. the middle two butcher birds see their eye fly between them mid air. It's a diagrammatic horizontal painting of subtle browns and earthy tones.

Butcher Bird 2026
Acrylic on cotton
30 x 100 cm

The Killing of the First Beautiful Butterfly 2026
Acrylic on cotton
38 x 100 cm

Next, the eye is caught by a book, Amalie Dietrich: Ein Leben. This biography, which examines the difficult legacy of the nineteenth-century German naturalist, is the starting point of the works shown here.

At the entrance to the exhibition, Charita’s Bischoff’s biography about her mother Amalie Dietrich is presented as an open book. We see the only pages that illustrate her procurement of indigenous remains

Book: Bischoff, Charitas. Amalie Dietrich: Ein Leben. Berlin: Grote, 1927.

Madeleine Kelly focuses on the birds that Amalie Dietrich “collected” in Australia between 1863 and 1873.

The Australian artist’s painting Bird Trap Line (2026) reminds us that this act of collection was always one of violent capture. Arranging them on delicate lines, she brings back to life the waterbirds who are now preserved specimens in the collections of the Natural History Museum Bamberg. By doing so, she creates a tension between strictly geometrical order and the imperfections of the natural world.

The birds in this painting are based on those from The Bird Hall, Naturkundemuseum Bamberg. In The Zoological Collections at the Museum of Natural History in Bamberg originally from the Godeffroy Museum in Hamburg which provided 80 avifauna species from Queensland, Australia, which were gathered by the professional collector Amalie Dietrich (1821–1891)’. For this painting I identified waterfowl and then chose those collected by Dietrich. The birds’ postures are based on the images in the catalogue with colours enhanced to re-enliven them and their forms were cross-checked online. For example, one can see an Australian Pied Stilt Himantopus leucocephalus based on a taxidermy bird collected/killed by Amelie Dietrich, 1872, Port Mackay. B. Shoreline Birds • Vanellus miles – Masked Lapwing 245 - yes • Pluvialis fulva – Pacific Golden Plover 253 - ? • Erythrogonys cinctus – Red-kneed Dotterel 254 - yes • Heteroscelus incanus – Wandering Tattler 272 - yes • Calidris acuminata – Sharp-tailed Sandpiper 275 - yes • Himantopus leucocephalus – Pied Stilt 364 - yes C. Wetland Birds • Porphyrio melanotus – Australasian Swamphen p 901 • Gallinula mortierii – Tasmanian Native-hen p 257 - yes • Irediparra gallinacea – Comb-crested Jacana p 251 yes • Gallinago hardwickii Latham’s snipe p 263 – yes • Dendrocygna eytoni - Plumed Whistling Duck p 311 - yes • Chenonetta jubata – Australian Wood Duck p 343 • Threskiornis spinicollis – Straw-necked Ibis p 369 • Egretta novaehollandiae – White-faced Heron 349 - yes • Ardea pacifica – White-necked Heron p 349 - yes • Egretta sacra – Pacific Reef Heron p 345 – yes • Anhinga novaehollandiae – Australasian Darter p 340 – does not list AD, AI id’ed. • Phalacrocorax melanoleucos – Little Pied Cormorant p 339 - yes D. Shorebirds and Waders (strong migrants) • Pluvialis fulva – Pacific Golden Plover • Calidris acuminata – Sharp-tailed Sandpiper • Heteroscelus incanus – Wandering Tattler p 273 - yes • Himantopus leucocephalus – Pied Stilt (partial migrant) E. Swamp and woodland bird: Burhinus grallarius Bush-stone curlew p 346 - yes This painting recalls historical images of conference or assembly of birds. However, instead of branches, the birds sit in order on lines, a network of colonising and possible extinction, but also, paradoxically, these geometric structures and connections suggest an intricate mesh of delicate branches, sprouting leaves and depict them as if in harmony with the birds.

Bird Trap Line 2026
Pigment, binder and oil paint on polyester
185 x 155 cm

Australian Pied Stilt Himantopus leucocephalus on a geometric ground.

Bird Trap Line (detail) 2026
Pigment, binder and oil paint on polyester
185 x 155 cm

This is also apparent in Madeleine Kelly’s Rainbow Lorikeet (2026). The outlines of this bird’s vertebrae in the collection of the Museum of Natural History Berlin are precisely painted, causing the deviations from grid’s exact circles to stand out all the more. The large-format painting introduces viewers to the aesthetic contrast between fragility and semiotic density that is typical of Madeleine Kelly’s colourful works.

This depicts a monumental Trichoglossus moluccanus (Rainbow Lorikeet) spine or backbone on a geometric pattern of interlocking circles where each vertebra emphasises different configurations. The interlocking pattern is visible all through Paphos mosaics and other Byzantine images. The palette is high key chromatic greys Below are dark green small silhouettes of Amalie Dietrich and her dog based on illustration by Alfred Hund in Gertrude Enderlein's book Die Frau Aus Siebenlehn. I arranged access to this single specimen of a rainbow lorikeet to make some drawings at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin. The spine was drawn from a mounted skeleton collected Rockhampton Australia 1863 – 73. The skeleton was collected for the Museum Godfried, Hamburg. The vertical format accentuates the contrast in scale between the tiny figures and the giant spine.

Rainbow Lorikeet 2026
Acrylic on canvas
300 x 95 cm

A symbolically charged scene emerges in Lighting Treasures (2026), in which Amalie Dietrich’s botanical legacy turns into enigmatic emblems, as Acacia dietrichiana and Bonamia dietrichiana can only be discerned schematically. Like all finds, they were classified according to European methods and thus incorporated into a colonial system of knowledge.

Several plant taxa were named in Dietrich’s honour, including Hibiscus amaliae, Pagetia dietrichiae, and Eleocharis dietrichiae. Here I have depicted Acacia dietrichiana and Bonamia dietrichiana. The image is of a ‘Spintop’ by Ilsle Schroder, on display at The Grassi Museum, Leipzig, but Instead of arms terminating in bells we see lightbulbs, one warmer in tone than the other. Her face is futuristic and her bun is based on a Brancusi.

Lighting Treasures (Acacia dietrichiana and Bonamia dietrichiana) 2026
Oil and acrylic on polyester
80 cm x 90 cm

The exact identification of species also plays an essential role in Madeleine Kelly’s artistic process. Meticulous research and a deep understanding of her pictorial motifs form the basis of her work. This is evident in her ongoing series Grey Heron and Waterfowl Kin (2026), which originated during her year-long stay in Berlin. A flock of colourful bird sculptures lure us deeper into the exhibition space, inviting us to step forward and take a closer look. Layer upon layer of coloured wax on recycled drink cartons has resulted in almost playful portrayals of Berlin waterbirds, visualizing the coexistence of nature and human consumption.

Birds from: Kreuzberg Spree, Spreewald Forest, Jasmund National Park, Rugen, Käbelicksee (Müritz National Park) and Stuttgart. Lackmöwen Lesser kestral Mallard duck (male) Malard duck (female) Ferruginous duck Egyptian goose Common merganser (female) Canada goose Crow Swan Eurasian Coot Grey Herron Common crane Common wood pigeon Short toed tree creeper Crested tit Red start Chiff chaff Long tailed tit White wagtail Gold crest Red winged turd Great spotted woodpecker Greylag goose

Grey heron and waterfowl kin 2026
Encaustic wax on cardboard
24 parts ranging from 4 x 10 x 9.5 cm to 20 x 10 x 63 cm

Grey heron and waterfowl kin 2026
Encaustic wax on cardboard
24 parts ranging from 4 x 10 x 9.5 cm to 20 x 10 x 63 cm

The installation Collect, Collect! Gather (2026) recalls the mission that Amalie Dietrich was tasked with when she travelled to Australia. Like mythical death masks, the monotypes reflect the processes of selection and appropriation involved: from a collection of over fifty textile works, the artist has selected only the most aesthetically pleasing examples. This makes it clear that the work of the European naturalist in Australia was one of continual taking: first taking a life, then taking it to Europe. The dozens of catalogued and preserved birds, flowers and butterflies that Madeleine Kelly isolates in her work can be found today in German museums.

A series of nine mono prints on t-shirt fabric hang mid air in a mobile formation. Like mythical death masks, the monotypes reflect this process of selection and appropriation. They appear as Rorschach or butterfly prints.

Collect, collect! Gather 2026 Binder and pigment on textile 9 parts, approximately 50 x 60 cm each 250 x 320 x 350 cm

The artist systematically explores Amalie Dietrich’s collections and life, approaching them as if she were a naturalist herself, and Amalie Dietrich her object of study. It could also be Madeleine Kelly herself in conversation with swans of light in The Naturalist’s Gaze (2026).

But where appraisal and classification once took place, the artist now refuses to draw any definitive conclusions.Instead, her works use transformation and realignment to complement an aesthetic level of speculation and ambivalence that breaks up the unyielding legacy of colonial order – a reversal that successfully exposes what is apparently objective and opens up endless possibilities for reinterpretation.

Text: Philine Pahnke

This is a complex geometric picture depicting a nude androgynous figure seated on a chair taking a sunbath while looking at a blank page. A network of giant geometric swans arranged in a figure eight also seem to nuzzle her body, their giant beaks are between aid and attack. The image is mostly white and tiled the naturalist's gaze, alluding to Amalie Dietrich's white colonising gaze. The swans are mostly transparent and only seen once the ambiguity between the figure and ground is noticed.

The Naturalist’s Gaze 2026
Acrylic on cotton
90 cm x 80 cm

A series of waterfowl sculptures made from drinking containers covered in wax with paintings in the background. From Madeleine Kelly's exhibition, The first killing of the butterfly.

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, on display as part of ‘The First Killing of a Butterfly’ exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien
12.06.2026 – 09.08.2026

This is an image of a person constructed of vertically arranged giant orange shells. It could be a depiction of the naturalist Amalie Dietrich flanked by two scroll like floating birds, one gently pecks at her arm while another floats towards an arrow. She is carrying shells in the air as if dancing with pink clouds. The ground of squares and diamond is taken from Byzantine mosaics. The birds-scrolls are both futuristic and classic in appearance.

Spiral Notation 2026
Acrylic and oil on polyester
90 x 80 cm

Four white swans arranged in the form of a palette peck into a womb. Three have eggs in their beaks. The palette is fresh - mainly aqua and white but the content is dark as the birds could be attacking her womb, perhaps they are signifiers of patriarchal power.

Full of Objects from You 2026
Acrylic on polyester
95 x 80 cm

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly on display as part of 'The First Killing of the Butterfly exhibition, at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien 12.06.2026 – 09.08.2026 We can see three works where birds signify the life of Amalie Dietrich

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, on display as part of ‘The First Killing of a Butterfly’ exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien
12.06.2026 – 09.08.2026

This geometric painting on a pattern of multicoloured isometric triangles is based on a photograph by Cartier-Bresson entitled Hunting in which a chain of slaughtered animals hangs elegantly across the hunters shoulders and a dog sniffs the snout of one of the animals, perhaps a kangaroo.

Linking Chain (after Cartier-Bresson) 2026
Acrylic on cotton
90 cm x 80 cm

Invitation for Madeleine Kelly the first killing of a butterfly that depicts Amalie Dietrich entangled in her daughter's lies about the yellow necklace and the blue flower. We see Dietrich trying to catch a butterfly with a net. We see a giant beaded yellow necklace arranged in a spiral.

The Lies 2026
Pigment, binder, acrylic and oil on polyester
150 x 110 cm

This is a white paint on beige cotton geometric painting of Cyperus haspan L. var. dietrichiae Domin collected by Dietrich in Mackay. It is based on a botanical specimen found in Germany at JACQ. https://jacq.org/detail/2152278 Australien, Queensland, Port Mackay

Sedges have Edges (Cyperus haspan dietrichiae) 2026
Acrylic on cotton
90 x 80 cm

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Photo of Emily Hunt, Anna Louise Roland, Benjamin Busch, Madeleine Kelly, Sonja Schönberger, Felicity Mangan, and more.

Photographer: Galya Feierman

Artist Madeleine Kelly before her work Collect, collect! Gather, Berlin

Photographer: Galya Feierman

September 30, 2025 In

Künstlerhaus Bethanien Residency, Berlin 2025-26

During my residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, I am developing a new body of work where birds, sunlight, and language interlace as forms of kinship. Through painting, sculpture and sound, the project draws on wetland species and solar radiance to imagine poetic systems of connection and energy consumption.

Madeleine Kelly Sun and Moon 2025 Oil and acrylic on polyester 77 x 92 cm

In Sun and Moon (2026) a doll-like body leans over an oily, whirling base of vermilion red and alizarin crimson lines. Its simplified arms end in lightbulbs—cool on the left and warm on the right—suggesting a body merging with a machine, from hand to bulb and ultimately to sun. The face is lit by the warm glow, as if attuning to its posthuman form, where light emanates from the figure-as-light. The passage of a day is embodied in the suggestion of repeated labour, burning, and spinning, but also the spiritual and primordial encounter between eye and flame.

Madeleine Kelly Listen to the Ground (diptych), 2024 Oil on polyester 92 x 76cm (right panel)

September 30, 2025 In

Avian Assembly, Singleton Arts and Cultural Centre 2025

AVIAN ASSEMBLY

Fernando do Campo

Madeleine Kelly

Raquel Ormella

17 May – 3 Aug 2025

Photos: Edwina Richards

AVIAN ASSEMBLY invites deep reflection on the relationships between humans and birds, as well as the broader ecological systems that connect us all. As we look toward the future, integrating nature and society remains crucial to our collective vision for sustainability and ecological responsibility. This exhibition challenges us to critically examine the human history that has shaped our interactions with the natural world.

Through its works, AVIAN ASSEMBLY opens a space for contemplation on themes of kinship, freedom, and confinement, urging us to recognize the responsibility we bear in safeguarding the natural world for future generations. We hope that by engaging with these works, visitors will foster a deeper connection to the environment—one that extends beyond art and inspires action.

Madeleine Kelly ‘Liminal Birds’ 2025, Oil and acrylic on polyester, 92 x 61 cm.

Madeleine Kelly Listen to the Ground (diptych), 2024 Oil on polyester 92 x 76cm (right panel)

Madeleine Kelly Listen to the Ground (diptych), 2024 Oil on polyester 76 x 92cm (left) and 92 x 76cm (right)

Madeleine Kelly Listen to the Ground (diptych), 2024 Oil on polyester
76 x 92cm (left)

Installation view Avian assembly: Madeleine Kelly Canberra Birds: Cute Craft for the Archive of Painting, 2018 – 19; Madeleine Kelly Stair Ghost 2019 Oil on polyester 137 x 101 cm; Raquel Ormella; 340 And Counting – 21 Species: 3 Parrots, 5 Thornbills, Some Honeyeaters, Wrens And Flycatchers 2021

Installation view Avian assembly: Raquel Ormella; 340 And Counting – 21 Species: 3 Parrots, 5 Thornbills, Some Honeyeaters, Wrens And Flycatchers 2021, Fernando do Campo Pishing in the Archive, 2021 Single channel video

Raquel Ormella Today I Saw… , 2025 Dimensions variable

Raquel Ormella

Installation view Avian Assembly: Madeleine Kelly Prophets, 2024 Oil on polyester 92 X 61 cm, Fernando do Campo Pishing In The Archive, 2021 Single channel video

Installation view: Fernando do Campo To Companion a Native Companion, 2018, Fernando do Campo Kounellis Must Have Used Roal River Coal, 2018, Madeleine Kelly Stair Ghost 2019

Madeleine Kelly Canberra Birds: Cute Craft for the Archive of Painting, 2018 – 19

September 30, 2025 In

The Archibald Prize 2025, Art Gallery of NSW, with Diana Wood Conroy projects

Diana Wood Conroy is an artist and Emeritus Professor Visual Arts, at the University of Wollongong. I chose Diana because we share a love of geometry, colour, shape and pattern. She has created hundreds of beautifully woven tapestries and authored several books. She writes that ‘The Latin word textus (literally ‘thing woven’) is a word that links to tissue, to the fabric of life.’

Archibald Prize 2025 finalist, Madeleine Kelly ‘Diana through threads’, oil and synthetic polymer paint on polyester, 96.8 x 71.2 cm © the artist, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter
Sitter: Diana Wood Conroy

In 2023 Diana invited me to be resident artist at the Sydney University Paphos Theatre Archaeological Project, an ancient theatre in Cyprus within the World Heritage-listed site of Paphos, surrounded by traces of Roman and Byzantine mosaics.

The portrait melds Diana’s obsession with numbers and patterns with a structured way of painting. I expose the method used to make the painting, with Diana’s arm resting on the foundation of the triangle fundamental to the geometry of the work.

The loom through which we see her is a field of lines that has the effect of creating a passage between the viewer and Diana’s creative power. Threads in-between Diana and the viewer facilitate a kind of entry into her big deep eyes.

I depict the intensity of her gaze through the crystalline. By magnifying the eyes, I make them stare back at the viewer, with an assertive, determined quality. There’s an asymmetry to the eyes which has a much more interesting effect than straight realism.

When I was painting Diana, I was thinking about several works: Gustave Courbet’s The man made mad with fear (The Desperate Man), 1843 – 4, Charley Toorop’s Self-portrait 1944-5, the observation in Lucian Freud’s early portraits, Max Beckman’s self-portraits, Howard Taylor’s Double Self Portrait 1959, Margaret Preston’s portraits and the staring intensity of 6 th century mosaics from the church of the saints Costa and Damian in Rome.

Madeleine Kelly Aphrodite Chthonia and Ourania with Stars 2023 Acrylic on canvas board 18 x 23 cm

Madeleine Kelly Pregnant Goddess 2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas board 23 x 18 cm

Madeleine Kelly Chthonic aphrodite 2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas board 23 x 18cm

Madeleine Kelly Sperm Wave 2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas board 23 x 18 cm

My time as artist-in-residence at The University of Sydney Paphos Theatre Archaeological Project (PTAP) continues to inspire me. Diana, the Paphos Theatre Archaeological Project’s Artist-in-Residence since 1996, explained how the shapeshifting figure of Dionysius is embedded in the theatre, located alongside the Archaeological Park of Paphos. Here the intricate mosaic floors of four Roman villas (the houses of Dionysos, Theseus, Aion and Orpheus) framed my conceptual universe for three weeks. The mosaics offered incredible patterning and iconography. I appraised them alongside bursts of inflorescence, red poppies glowing in the sunset with flitting birds. Together, they spoke to the rhythms of the mosaics: their geometries inspired a new imaginative dimension to my work, building on previous research into the scintillating patterns in Ravenna, Italy, in 2022.

Byzantine art fuses pagan and Christian iconography through illusionism and geometry, reflecting its neo-platonic origins. I noted their remarkable formations, always within circular and gridded foundations, and put them in my paintings. For me, the mosaics represent the current ambiguity and complexity within the world of translation and communication. Aphrodite too, is an appropriate subject in a world of struggles against nature.

Ecologist Donna Harraway also writes about the Sym-chthonic – an earth that does not dither, it composes and recomposes, bridging the idea of the mineral underworld, mosaics, and environmental themes. For me, the mosaics represent the current ambiguity and complexity within the world of translation and communication. Aphrodite too is an appropriate subject in a world of struggles against nature.

The figure of Aphrodite is embedded in Paphos alongside The Archaeological Park of Paphos and its birds. Aphrodite, goddess of the underworld, offers incredible symbolism for ideas around the earth and ‘composting’ and the mosaic patterning and iconography of the intricate mosaic floors of four Roman villas continue to offer a geometric avenue to develop my practice.

August 5, 2024 In

Entangled Flashes / Verwickelte Blitze, Galerie Spinnerei Archiv Massiv 2024

Entangled Flashes was supported by Galerie Spinnerei Archiv Massiv, CREATE NSW and The University of Sydney, Australia.

Waiting for the sun to rise, 2024. Oil on canvas, 102 x 77cm. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

This exhibition explores entangled light. Between diagram and painting, lines of light and energy connect the primordial and the industrial, pointing to the exploitation of nature and technology. Intangible light consolidates into thread, weaves through stove tops, flashes from colour, shines through glaze. In the facets of crystalline paintings, light refracts through pigments, through crystal eyes, feeding our evolutionary bodies. Then, light rakes across the surface, casting shadows – to trace, to draw, to paint… and sometimes to cast shadows of doubt.

Installation view Madeleine Kelly Entangled Flashes, Archive Massiv Leipzig Spinnerei Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

At this current time, we recognise that life is bound and liberated by light – it divides and energises. Photosynthesis in leaves mirrors photoreception in eyes. The eye – light assemblage transforms into chemical energy as a material line that weaves into actions and words, hardware and codes. The convergence of sign and life is woven by spiders who spin threads of entangled flashes, the corporeal nature of geometric forms. The web, the alchemical circle, the orphic, the rotorelief and the optical unconscious bring aesthetics into the scientific fields of optics and physiology. But in a flash, it will be over… like everything else.

Madeleine Kelly Apparatus for the bits worth keeping, 2024. Oil and acrylic on polyester, 280 x 180 cm. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Apparatus for the bits worth keeping (detail), 2024. Oil and acrylic on polyester, 280 x 180 cm. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Installation view Madeleine Kelly Entangled Flashes, Archive Massiv Leipzig Spinnerei with Apparatus for the bits worth keeping, 2024. Oil and acrylic on polyester, 280 x 180 cm. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Fighting over Flowers, 2024. Oil and acrylic on polyester, 70 x 56cm. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Installation view Madeleine Kelly Entangled Flashes, Archive Massiv Leipzig Spinnerei

Installation view Madeleine Kelly Entangled Flashes, Archive Massiv Leipzig Spinnerei Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Spinner, 2024. Oil on board 32 x 40cm.

Language lamp, 2024. Oil stick on fabric, glass, metal.

Madeleine Kelly Sparks beneath syntax, 2024. Oil stick on fabric, dimensions variable. Photo: Falk Messerschmidt

Shoulder, 2024. Oil and acrylic on board 40 x 32cm.

Sparks beneath syntax (detail), 2024. Oil stick on fabric, dimensions variable

Stone and crystal, 2024. Oil and acrylic on board 32 x 40cm.

White-faced herron 2024. Oil and acrylic on board 40 x 32cm.

Stone and crystal II, 2024. Oil and acrylic on board 32 x 40cm.

Ghosts whose forms are active, 2024. Oil and acrylic on board 40 x 32cm.

May 27, 2024 In

Birds and Language Exhibition

Birds and Language, curated by Madeleine Kelly

Exhibition: 20 November 2021 – 13 February 2022

Wollongong City Gallery, NSW.

Birds and Language was an exhibition that drew upon works by highly significant Australian artists as well as art from the Wollongong City Gallery (WCG) collection. The works are speculative; they suggest a radically different approach to understanding and presenting the colours, forms, sounds and behaviours of birds and reimagining humanity’s relationship with non-human life.

The exhibition was accompanied by 15-page colour catalogue (print) and my 2800-word critical essay and complemented by substantive multidisciplinary projects: A two-day conference, an online curated exhibition of artists (19—20 August, 2021) and ‘Special Events’ at the Wollongong City Gallery (13 February). From bird dancing and acoustic rhythms to threatened birdsong and languages, birds were considered from important new horizons and perspectives.

Artists: Glenn Barkley, Barbara Campbell, Fernando do Campo, Eugene Carchesio, Ashley Eriksmoen, Emily Floyd, Liam Garstang, Danie Mellor, NOT, Bilinyarra Nabegeyo, Djawida Nadjongorle, Raquel Ormella, Debra Porch, Marie Celine Porkalari, Joan Ross, Laurens Tan, Hollis Taylor, John Tonkin, Jenny Watson, Louise Weaver and John Wolseley

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April 8, 2024 In

At Home with Painting

At Home with Painting, curated by Madeleine Kelly

Exhibition: Thursday 7 March – Saturday 20 April 2024

Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, Old Teachers’ College, The University of Sydney.

This exhibition explored the myriad ways of being at home with painting. Are we at home with the act of ‘painting’ (the verb), in the company of ‘Painting’ (the noun) or even constructing a kind of psychological ‘home’ through painting? Why are home and painting so emblematic of our struggles?

Painting, like home, occupies a unique position in our individual and collective psyches—as verb or noun—the promise of familiarity and comfort but perhaps too, lingering in its textures, the strange and uncanny, or even discomfort and threat. Painting can be good company too. To be at home with painting is to explore its crystalline dimensions and these artists do just that.

Artists: Hany Armanious, Amber Boardman, Angela Brennan, Diena Georgetti, Alex Gawronski, Newell Harry, Madeleine Kelly, Spencer Lai, Archie Moore, Jahnne Pasco-White, Lisa Radford, Tim Schultz, Jelena Telecki and Rex Veal.

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Archie Moore Bannertree floor, 2021 Acrylic on nothing

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At Home with Painting, curated by Madeleine Kelly

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Lisa Radford Understudy series (above) Furniture Painting (below)

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Angela Brennan Are our atoms ours, 2022 Oil on linen; Schrodinger’s Equation (some of it), 2022 Oil on linen; Amber Boardman Coffee Extremist, 2023 Oil on canvas

To be at home with painting has an inbuilt elasticity. These artists, while ‘at home’ with paintings, explore them as unfixed objects. They implore us to explore their ‘homely’ worlds while challenging us to decode contemporary painting.

Madeleine Kelly, March, 2024

Jelena Telecki Interior 2, 2021 Oil on linen

June 23, 2023 In

The National 4, Art Gallery of NSW, 2023

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, featuring ‘Supernature’ 2023, ‘On the paper petals crack’ 2023, ‘Pelican analogues’ 2023 and ‘Middle-earth’ 2023, on display as part of ‘The National 4: Australian Art Now’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 24 March – 23 July 2023, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mim Stirling

‘Madeleine Kelly’s expansive art practice examines the complex exchange between nature and culture. Her work is layered with references to her garden and the natural world, the history of art and mythology, and the role of the intuitive and subliminal in the creative process.

For The National 4, Kelly has created a new collection of paintings and porcelain sculptures that draw from her ongoing interest in nature’s cycles of destruction and regeneration. These sensory compositions suggest a web that supports a world we cannot see, a mysterious portal into a place where art is the explanation of language, signs and logical systems, and nature is the home for geometry, chemistry and physics.

Ever-present in Kelly’s art is the rumbling of modernity – the mechanical disruption of natural order and balance elicited by our extraction and depletion of the environment’ (Beatrice Gralton, curator, The National 4, 24 March – 23 July 2023, Art Gallery of New South Wales).

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, featuring ‘Supernature’ 2023, ‘On the paper petals crack’ 2023 and ‘Middle-earth’ 2023, on display as part of ‘The National 4: Australian Art Now’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 24 March – 23 July 2023.

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, featuring ‘Repetitions’ 2023 and ‘Formless forms’ 2023, on display as part of ‘The National 4: Australian Art Now’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 24 March – 23 July 2023, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mim Stirling

Madeleine Kelly 'Pelican Analogues’ 2023, Oil and casein on polyester, 150 x 110 cm.

‘Pelican Analogues’ 2023, oil and casein on polyester, 150 x 110 cm. Private collection.

‘Pelican analogues (2023) is similarly inspired by Kelly’s time in Ravenna, borrowing the form of a helix that appeared in many of the Byzantine mosaics. Within this spiralling framework Kelly depicts a human figure embracing pelican alongside abstracted nasturtium leaves. The intertwining bodies undergo an alchemical transformation, assuming elements of the others’ form while they float against a backdrop of eddying currents and visceral layers’ (Tai Spruyt, assistant curator, The National 4 catalogue essay).

‘Middle-earth’ 2023, porcelain, wood, panels ranging from 56.5 x 41 cm to 56.5 x 56.5 cm.

In ‘Middle-earth’ 2023, five die cast moulds for metal fittings manufacturing hang mid-air. Their function is inverted, the very idea of piping systems, unions, couplings, crossings, nipples or plugs is reversed; instead of connecting, the recto and verso of each panel face out in opposition. Forms associated with industrial power are invested with a libidinal energy where there is no chance of industrial progress. Their textured surfaces recall early forms of language such as ideographs, and hieroglyphs, some as if from an old world, where tokens functioned as word signs (Madeleine Kelly, artist statement).

‘Formless forms’ 2022 Oil and casein on polyester, 70 x 56 cm

In ‘Formless forms’ (2022), earthworms wriggle across the surface as painterly gestures. One worm slips behind a stripe and another around the edge of the frame. A single passage of paint was enough to embody their indeterminate forms. For Dionysius the Areopagite, the earthworm was the closest representation of God, a ‘formless form’ that moves in and out of itself, and just as Dionysius was a shapeshifter, these humble Wollongong worms point beyond figurative representation to the formless world of the spiritual, the earth behind the painting (Madeleine Kelly, artist statement).

‘Supernature’ 2023 Oil on polyester 138 x 102 x 3 cm. Private collection.

Like a computer circuit board, the figure’s punched-out face resembles a loom, and her sculpted hair and thorax-neck give her a cyborg compatibility.

‘On the paper petals crack’ 2023 oil and acrylic on canvas 138 x 102 cm

Installation view of works by Madeleine Kelly, featuring ‘Supernature’ 2023, ‘On the paper petals crack’ 2023, ‘Pelican analogues’ 2023 and ‘Middle-earth’ 2023, on display as part of ‘The National 4: Australian Art

Now’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 24 March – 23 July 2023, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mim Stirling

June 17, 2023 In

Mnemosyne, Earth Drill, Hazelhurst Arts Centre 2023

Works exhibited in In the arms of unconsciousness: Women, Feminism and the Surreal, Hazelhurst Arts Centre (1 July – 27 August, 2023) curated by Carrie Kibbler.

Mnemosyne 2023 oil on polyester, 101 x 137 cm

Mnemosyne carries all the weight of our collective unconscious embedded in our desire to find/understand the shape of things. Spirals have a double movement that opens outward or draws back, a twofold rhythm of liveliness and creation, and withdrawal and entropy. This inward outward motion is a pattern recording the material life of time. The figure in the background is appropriated from ‘Burial of the Wood’ by Piero della Francesca.

Earth drill 2023 oil on polyester, 137 x 101 cm

In Earth drill, Chthonic birds float around this Wollongong earth drill’s spiral. Their elongated tongues extend to pollinate flowers or interpenetrate eyes, suggesting symbiotic exchange and networks akin to neural synapses of the brain, where branched forms metaphorically float around in watery heads transmitting meaning. The painting might be considered an oily network of memory, the brain inside out, where geometric ‘treelets’ interact with biomorphic forms . A mould for industrial manufacturing doubles as the sun while other moulds spin out in the underworld.

March 21, 2023 In

Birds & Language 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

I regularly publish visual art-focused critiques that contribute to current thought by examining and reflecting on the changing relationships between humans and nature. My key project, Birds & Language, is an extension of this research and has involved making abstract bird sculptures and working in cross-disciplinary and inclusive ways.

Through Birds & Language, I bring together artists, thinkers and conservationists, providing an opportunity to build grounds for a cross-disciplinary encounter between the natural sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. I lead research in unique fusions of linguistics, ornithology, evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, music, and so on, extending and challenging existing hierarchies and moving the parameters of visual art practice into exciting new transdisciplinary ways of working.

These bird projects have included:

A two-day Birds and Language Conference hosted by USyd SACE (co-convened with Ian Maxwell) with international and national attendees and presenters. The two days concluded with an online pop-up exhibition (due to COVID-19 restrictions). The conference and exhibition were an enormous success, with significant external reach: 346+ registrations and 70 in attendance (two days). From Darwin to Tasmania, 20 writers and 20 artists contributed to this national event.
A major exhibition, Birds and Language, at one of NSW’s largest regional art museums, Wollongong Art Gallery, supplemented by special events and accompanied by a 15-page colour catalogue (print), which included my 2800-word critical curatorial essay about 21 artists, previewed in Artist Profile Magazine.
Following this, Jen Valender and I edited a ‘Birds and Language’ edition of Unlikely – Journal for Creative Arts. Unlikely is run by The University of Melbourne and is a prestigious transdisciplinary journal, which aims to open unexpected spaces for artistic exchange and scholarly conversations across mediums, disciplines and continents (Issue 08). We published 17 double-blind peer-reviewed scholarly essays and 14 media-rich creative research projects in the Project Space.

My bird artworks are an ongoing diary of sorts, and belong to significant public collections: Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; the University of Queensland Art Museum; the University of Wollongong Art Collection and the Queensland Children’s Hospital. 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.

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

Leipzig birds 2016-17

Woodcock, Spatz (Sparrow), Eisvogel (Kingfisher), Goldammer (Yellow hammer), Amsel, Elster (Magpie), Kleiber (Eurasian nuthatch), Krähe, Amsel (Black bird), Kuckuck (Cuckoo), Schwarzspecht (black woodpecker), Weißstorch (White stork), Seidenschwanz (Waxwing), Mandarinente (Mandarin duck), Kohlmeise (Great tit), Firecrest, Garden warbler, Schwan (Swan), Mauersegler (Swift), Blaumeise (Blue tit), Mittelspecht (Medium spotted woodpecker), Buntspecht (Great woodpecker), Kleinspecht (Lesser pied woodpecker), Grunspecht (Green woodpecker), Unidentified bird.

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

Birds of The D’Aguilar Range 2017, Collection: University of Queensland Art Museum

Bush stone-curlew, Blue-faced honeyeater, Crested pigeon, Sulphur-crested cockatoo, Eastern koel, Pheasant cuckoo, Pied butcherbird, Purple crowned pigeon, Sacred kingfisher, Forest kingfisher, Great egret, Australasian figbird, Wompoo fruit dove, Common starling.

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.

Pelagic birds 2017, Collection: University of Wollongong

Southern giant-petrel, Northern giant-petrel, Cape petrel, Great-winged petrel, Fairy prion, Fluttering shearwater, Hutton’s shearwater, Wandering albatross, Gibson’s albatross, Black-browed albatross, White-capped albatross, Campbell albatross, Indian yellow-nosed albatross, White-faced storm-petrel (x2), Australasian gannet, Little pied cormorant, Pied cormorant, Little black cormorant, Australian pelican, Silver gull, Crested tern, White-fronted tern, Tern.

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

Canberra birds: Cute craft for the painting archive 2018 encaustic on cardboard and brick 19 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11 to 27 x 27 x 9 cm (birds)

Wee bill, White browed scrubwren, European gold finch, House sparrows (male and female), Willy wagtail, Pee wee lark, Latham’s snipe, Buff-banded rail, Baby crimson rosella, Red wattle bird, Pied currawong, Little corella, Grey teal, Dusky moore hen, Australasian coot, Black shouldered kite, Pacific black duck.

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

Barren Grounds 2015, collection Queensland Children’s Hospital

Eastern whipbird, Pilot bird, Yellow-tailed black cockatoo, Brown thornbill, Beautiful firetail, Lyrebird, Grey fantail, White-throated treecreeper, King parrot, Eastern bristlebird, Female bowerbird and Rufous whistler.

GOMA QLD publication.

Spectra of Birds 2014-15, Collection, QAGOMA

Birds seen in the Illawarra, NSW: Welcome swallow, Superb fairy-wren, Crimson rosella, Red-browed finch, Green catbird, Purple swamphen, Sooty oystercatcher, New Holland honeyeater, Great cormorant, Satin bowerbird, Eastern whipbird, Australian pelican, Laughing kookaburra, Rainbow lorikeet, Spotted pardalote, Magpie, Eastern yellow robin, Bassian thrush, Eastern rosella, Cattle egret, White-faced heron (Blue Crane), Crested tern, White-browed scrubwren, Variegated fairy-wren, Fan-tailed cuckoo, Lewin’s honeyeater, Golden whistler, White-headed pigeon, Brown cuckoo dove, Scarlet honeyeater, Eastern spinebill, Black-faced cuckoo-shrike, Red-whiskered bulbul, Pied cormorant, Noisy miner, Dollarbird, Galah, Scrub turkey, Masked lapwing (Plover), Tawny frogmouth.

This year I was thrilled to have my work Spectra of Birds 2014-15 currently showing as part of Wonderstruck! What a joy to work with co-curators Tamsin Cull and Laura Mudge, to be part of the pop up talks, to help design educational resources about my works, and to be shown alongside artists I admire in the context of ‘in Flight’, a room devoted to works with birds.

Madeleine Kelly with Spectra of birds 2014-15, installed for ‘Wonderstruck’, GOMA, Brisbane, June 2025 / Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: QAGOMA / © Madeleine Kelly/Copyright Agency / Photograph: C Callistemon, QAGOMA.

Madeleine Kelley’s Spectra of birds 2014-15, installed for ‘Wonderstruck’, GOMA, Brisbane, June 2025 / Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: QAGOMA / © Madeleine Kelly/Copyright Agency / Photograph: N Umeck, QAGOMA