Peter Madden
b.1966
Crouches with moths
- 2010
- Found photographs, paper, wood, plastic, baked clay, paint, gold leaf
- Purchased 2011
- 830 x 700 x 500mm
- 2011/225
Location: Touring Gallery C
Tags: black (color), insects, people (agents), plants (living organisms), skeleton and skeleton components, trees
A shroud of moths, their outlines cut from National Geographic magazines, rises up around this frail blackened skeleton. Gripped between its teeth is a golden coin, like those the ancient Greeks inserted into dead people’s mouths as ‘Charon’s obol’, a ritualistic payment for the ferry ride to the underworld. Peter Madden’s vision is deeply macabre, but not without humour or the hint of renewal. Springing from this decaying figure’s feet are werewere kōkako, the bright blue native mushroom named for the kōkako bird’s famous wattle – reminding us that death is part of a cycle that repeat endlessly over time.
(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Exhibition History
Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016
In classical times, a gold coin was inserted into a dead person's mouth as a ‘Charon’s obol’, a ritualistic payment for the ferry ride across the river Acheron to the underworld. With its blackened skeleton, crawling flies and shroud-like canopy of moths (cut free from the pages of National Geographic magazines), this work evokes an atmosphere of death and decay – but a closer look also reveals small signs of regeneration.
Related reading: Unseen: the changing collection
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