Maddison Wandel
My work explores the ways we search, understand and contest traumatic histories and memories that are buried deep within. Thinking through what is lost and absent, my practice is an engaged reimagining of the past, that attempts to recognise, explore, and spend time with uncomfortable truths and unknown realities that the present sits on top of. Installations using domestic materials in photographic and sculptural modes speak to the question of what is withheld when looking back. Drawing from personal experience and familial photographs and documents, I investigate the interior and exterior architectures that situate my memories in a reality away from trauma. Casted impressions of lived in domestic spaces perform tensions between what is repressed and liberated, held and released. Through my practice I seek to devise material and aesthetic apparatuses that support sharing memories of a complex childhood.
“an entire past comes to dwell in a new house”
Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
Maddison Wandel, Calling Back (for my mother), Plaster cast impressions of damaged door frame and wall, skirting, wall extension. Installation height specific to site location. Dimensions variable. Image Courtesy of University of Melbourne.
Maddison Wandel, Calling Back (for my mother), Plaster cast impressions of damaged door frame and wall, skirting, wall extension. Installation height specific to site location. Dimensions variable. Image Courtesy of the artist.
Maddison Wandel, Calling Back (for my mother), Plaster cast impressions of damaged door frame and wall, skirting, wall extension. Installation height specific to site location. Dimensions variable. Image Courtesy of the artist.
Maddison Wandel, Withholding, Curtain rod, steel, roller blind weight, wood, photographs L - R (Housing Commission Unit, Werribee 2002) & (Mums Bedroom - before children, Werribee South, 1999), dimensions variable, 2024, Image courtesy of Kim Feng Photography
Maddison Wandel, Withholding, Curtain rod, steel, roller blind weight, wood, photographs L - R (Housing Commission Unit, Werribee 2002) & (Mums Bedroom - before children, Werribee South, 1999), dimensions variable, 2024, Image courtesy of Kim Feng Photography
Maddison Wandel, Withholding, Curtain rod, steel, roller blind weight, wood, photographs L - R (Housing Commission Unit, Werribee 2002) & (Mums Bedroom - before children, Werribee South, 1999), dimensions variable, 2024, Image courtesy of Kim Feng Photography
Maddison Wandel, Withholding, Curtain rod, steel, roller blind weight, wood, photographs L - R (Housing Commission Unit, Werribee 2002) & (Mums Bedroom - before children, Werribee South, 1999), dimensions variable, 2024, Image courtesy of Kim Feng Photography
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music
University of Melbourne