Tricia Middleton (born 1972) is an installation artist based in Montreal, Quebec.[1] Middleton's artistic practice often involves the creation of elaborate, large-scale installations built out of a variety of materials including trash, wax, craft supplies, and other ephemera. She frequently re-purposes excess material from her studio practice in creating new installation and sculpture-based work. Her work has been collected by the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
Tricia Middleton | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1972 |
| Education | Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Concordia University |
| Known for | sculptor, installation artist |
Notable exhibitions
editIn 2009, Middleton exhibited a large installation at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal, titled Dark Souls.[2] Taking its title from a novel by Nikolai Gogol, Dark Souls was designed to resemble a decaying bourgeois parlour and involved five connecting rooms, each filled with garbage and refuse, towering sculptures, and two video projections.[3]
In 2012, Middleton created a site-specific installation at the Oakville Galleries at Gairloch Gardens. Titled Form is the Destroyer of Force, Without Severity There Can Be No Mercy, Middleton's installation, like Dark Souls, took found objects like shoes, vases, tea sets, and artificial roses and transformed them into uncanny assemblages covered in wax and glitter. The installation referenced the domestic architecture of the Oakville Galleries at Gairloch Gardens, turning the gallery into a fantastical home in decay.[4]
Middleton participated in a large-scale group exhibition titled Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque organized by the National Gallery of Canada, and exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton in 2013, and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto in 2014. The exhibition, which featured other prominent Canadian and international artists including David Altmejd, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and Sarah Sze, considered material excess and theatricality in recent installation art,[5][6] and questioned the nature-culture divide.[7] Other notable group exhibitions include Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada at The Power Plant in Toronto in 2009,[8] and the Quebec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal in 2008.[9]
Represented by Jessica Bradley Gallery in Toronto, Middleton recently exhibited small sculptures based on her prior large-scale installations at the commercial gallery, in an exhibition titled Tricia Middleton: Making Friends with Yourself.[10][11]
In 2023, Middleton published her first book, Obsidian Situations, in which "Parisian psychogeography unfolds through a practice of visionary mediumship drenched in melancholy and punctured by polemics. At once a singular transmission of eternal loss, a hilarious critique of the present, and a painstaking search among the ruins of rococo, this is writing with the ironic ring of truth."
Further reading
edit- Middleton, Tricia; (2023). Obsidian Situations: Anteism. ISBN 978-1-926968-67-4.
- Grant Marchand, Sandra; Tricia Middleton (2009). Tricia Middleton: dark souls. Montréal: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. ISBN 9782551238439.
- Crowston, Catherine; Josée Drouin-Brisebois; Jonathan Shaughnessy; National Gallery of Canada (2012). Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. ISBN 9780888849076.
References
edit- ^ Baird, Daniel (25 Oct 2012). "Artist Tricia Middleton explores destruction and decay with her moody installation at Oakville's Gairloch Gardens". The Toronto Star. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
- ^ "Tricia Middleton - 'Dark Souls' at MACM". Concordia University. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
- ^ Simon, Cheryl. "Tricia Middleton". Canadian Art. Spring 2010: 120. Retrieved 23 February 2014.
- ^ Baird, Daniel. "Artist Tricia Middleton explores destruction and decay with her moody installation at Oakville's Gairloch Gardens". The Toronto Star. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ "Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ "Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque". Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.
- ^ Cooley, Alison. "Nature-Culture Dialogue Dominates MOCCA's Neo-Baroque Show". Canadian Art Online. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ "Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada". The Power Plant. The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ "The Quebec Triennial 2008". Musee d'art Contemporain de Montreal. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ "Tricia Middleton: Making Friends with Yourself". Jessica Bradley Gallery. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
- ^ Luo, Amy. "Tricia Middleton: A Troubling Beauty". Canadian Art Online. Canadian Art. Retrieved 8 March 2015.