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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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