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Tia Madden

Tia Madden

MRes Candidate
Arts, Design & Architecture
School of Art & Design

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³§³Ü±è±ð°ù±¹¾±²õ´Ç°ù²õ:ÌýPeter Sharp, Rochelle Haley

Tia Madden is an artist and writer whose installations, texts, and drawings examine the overlap between drawing and writing. Interested in how humans encode, preserve, and transmit knowledge through mark-making, she draws from the social science-fiction genre to consider how marks can be misperceived over time, reshaping their original knowledge, or potentially, facilitating the generation of new, accidental meaning. Her MFA practice-based research project, tentatively titled ’Misreading Drawing: Legibility in the Gap Between Image and Word’, looks at the possibility of meaning when abstract marks are framed, or misread, as language.

Engaging an expanded drawing practice, Tia builds on the traditions of mark-making, asemic poetry, languages of abstraction, and undeciphered writing systems to consider how visual forms preserve and transmit information. As such, her research seeks to activate, engage, and destabilise the meaning-making process, asking: how can an expanded drawing practice examine the mutability of meaning and legibility in the gap between the image and the word?

Tia received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours in 2022 from UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture, and is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Arts by Research, which she commenced in 2024. She has exhibited work both nationally and internationally, including in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Canberra, and Cairo, and has written and curated for artist run publications and galleries. She was also selected for a one-month residency in Cairo, Egypt in 2023, which was supported by a grant from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. Tia currently works as the Assistant Curator at Penrith Regional Gallery, and is based on Dharug Land in the Blue Mountains.

My practice-based research project, 'Misreading Drawing: Legibility in the Gap Between Image and Word', is grounded in an expanded drawing practice to examine the mutability of meaning and legibility at the intersection of drawing and writing.

Selected Exhibitions

  • 2024, Torsion, Luna Studio, Newtown, NSW
  • 2024, A Message to the Future, a Note from the Past, Airspace Projects, Marrickville, NSW
  • 2024, Twelvefold, Penrith Regional Gallery, Emu Plains, NSW
  • 2023, Falak Gallery, Garden City, Cairo, Egypt
  • 2023, Luft, Mounted ARI, Springwood, NSW
  • 2023, Beyond the Dream, Comber St. Studios, Paddington, NSW
  • 2023, Cast, Mounted ARI, Springwood, NSW - Curatorial
  • 2023, In Flux: Liminal Longing, Comber St. Studios, Paddington, NSW
  • 2023, Finalist - M16 Drawing Prize, M16 Artspace, Griffith, ACT
  • 2023, Highly Commended - Lloyd Rees Emerging Artist Awards, Gallery Lane Cove, Lane Cove, NSW
  • 2023, Highly Commended - Gosford Art Prize, Gosford Regional Gallery, Gosford, NSW
  • 2023, Highly Commended - Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Croydon, NSW

Residencies

  • 2023, Out of the Circle Artist Residency, Cairo, Egypt
  • 2023, Ancher Points: Emerging Artists Intensive, Penrith Regional Gallery, Emu Plains, NSW

Authored Publications

  • 2024, Creative Non-Fiction Essay - ‘Misreading Mis/reading’ in ‘Return,’ Framework issue no. 40: https://www.tiamadden.com/misreading-misreading