Design and Art Australia Online

Biography

Madeleine Preston is a Sydney based artist and tutor at UNSW Art & Design. She has a Master of Fine Arts from RMIT and is a director of Home@735 Gallery.
Preston works with archival materials including photos, everyday objects and paintings to create installations that suggest alternative histories. The installations use temporary display conventions such as shop-front signage, posters, mock social media pages and projections along with more traditional display methods and media such as painting and ceramics.
Preston’s paintings have developed over more than 20 years from thick impasto surfaces to the current almost water colour use of oils. In 2014 she undertook an artist residency program run by Lynda Draper at Gymea TAFE. Since then she has continued to work in ceramics. Using her limited skill as a ceramicist to create rough approximations of sophisticated ancient forms the work suggests both folk ceramics in its execution and archaeological display when exhibited.
Preston has exhibited widely and recent exhibitions include on this day alone-Octopus 13 curated by Glenn Barkley, at Gertrude Contemporary, Glazed and Confused, curated by Lynda Draper, at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Sydney, Bookmarked at Stills Gallery, Sydney and Outsiders, Imposters & Aliens, curated by Bev Shroot & Louise Thoeming, Dominik Mersch Curators Award, at Domink Mersch Gallery, Sydney. In 2016 she will exhibit ceramic work as part of the Glenn Barkley curated TACA Biennial show Over Under Sideways Down at Manly Art Gallery and Museum.