Anne Madden: Colours of the Wind - Ariadne’s Thread

About

Madden’s abstracted landscapes see imaginative and emotional responses to place and memory. Her colour-saturated paintings are imbued with symbolic potency, dwelling on the complexities of the natural order and the tragedy of existence.

Her new work is inspired by the Greek goddess Ariadne whose love for Theseus saved him from death by the Cretan Minotaur. For Madden, myth opens doors to notional places and, in this body of work, Ariadne weaves her way through celestial spaces, her golden thread curling about her. The skies alternate between spectacular luminosity and foreboding, the threat of the infernal embodied in the image of the Minotaur.

Over her six-decade career, Madden has continually sought an understanding of the natural order and through her art attempts to uncover realities that exist but are unseen. The exhibition explores themes with a mnemonic effect linking us to the heritages of long ago while at the same time alerting us to the unfathomable magnitude of the Cosmos.

A fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Brian O’Doherty and Yvonne Scott will accompany this exhibition.