TRICIA MIDDLETON
The Rusty Toque | Issue 8 | Visual Art | June 30, 2015
TRICIA MIDDLETON'S sculptures and architectural installations propose hypothetical reverberations of a culture built around the unfettered production and consumption of inexpensive, disposable items of so-called use. Fascinated by the inevitable decline of all material towards collapse, Middleton zealously hoards and then repurposes the cast-offs from her studio production, amassing and grafting them onto one another to create synthetic objects and environments that mimic natural processes of accretion and decomposition. Her work traces the migration of form and meaning over time and, in so doing, strives to elucidate and overcome our heedless, if not apathetic attitude toward material culture.
Middleton was the recipient of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Visual Arts in 2010. Her recent solo exhibitions have been mounted at Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal (2009); Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2009); Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver (2011); Mercer Union, Toronto (2011); and Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ont. (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2012); Nothing to Declare: Recent Sculpture from Canada, The Power Plant, Toronto (2010); the inaugural Quebec Triennial, Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal (2008); and De-con-structions, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2007). Her work has been collected by the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal. Website: http://www.triciamiddleton.net/