Madeleine Cattanach is a sculpture artist whose practice focuses on the relationship between the organic, the manufactured, and the figurative. In her final year of the BA Fine Art degree at the University of Leeds, she works with materials that behave in both expected and unpredictable ways. In this sense, Madeleine calls on an ongoing interest in in the constructive process.

Working with these everyday objects lends the work a sense of the ordinary, however their purpose and function is reevaluated, reiterating the need to relate to the pieces in new ways. Each sculpture demonstrates the capacity of the premade form to produce both subtlety and crudeness. The inventing process represents her visual experience of the world- an enmeshment of textures, shapes and arrangements of the utterly ordinary. Madeleine creates responsively so that the pieces develop in the back‑and‑forth between intentional planning and material habits.

Threaded through her practice, each work inspects how forms hold weight, how they stand, and how different materials affect each other when brought into contact. This process helps the artist understand where stability and tension sit within each piece. In balancing familiar figurative suggestions- both in title and form- with unfamiliar construction, Madeleine’s pieces evoke an inviting disharmony with a boldness of presence.

Instagram: @m.cattanach_