Ram Mount

Ram Mount

  • Artist

    Peter Madden

  • Production Date

    2004

  • Medium

    found object & found images

  • Size

    300 x 250 x 200 mm

  • Credit

    Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2004

  • Accession Number

    C2004/1/27/2

  • Accession Date

    18 Nov 2004

  • Department

    New Zealand Art

  • Classification

    Object

  • Collection

    Chartwell

  • Description

    Sue Gardiner writes of Peter Madden: "In his secret and possibly idealist worlds there is a marriage between danger, romanticism, strangeness, reason and sentiment... the fear of catastrophe is always delicately balanced by beauty." Madden's sentimental surrealism recalls the work of Joseph Cornell. In Ram Mount a kitschy plastic animal head, a trophy on a heraldic wall plaque, has been feminised and gothicised with the addition of long eyelashes, blackened eyes and black tears - it's a little Marilyn Manson. No horns are visible, seemingly usurped by a crown of nesting trompe l'oeil butterflies. These images have been cut from encyclopedia plates and folded to resemble real butterflies, although alternative texts on their undersides give the game away. (Snake Oil, 2005)

Exhibition history