https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2410-3819
Figures & data
Figure 1. Sally Madge, Shelter on the north shore of Lindisfarne. Photo: Sally Madge, © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge.
A simple drystone hut (now destroyed) Shelter was constructed in two iterations on a relatively unvisited part of the tidal island of Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast, and represented in the exhibition through images, documents and related artefacts.
Figure 2. Sally Madge, Scatter as displayed in Acts of Reclamation, © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge. Photo: Colin Davison.
Over a period of years Madge beachcombed slivers of fabric, orphaned garments and textile scraps meticulously cleaning each of the elements before arranging and stitching them together into new-form assemblages.
Figure 3. Sally Madge: Acts of Reclamation (details), © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge, Photo: Colin Davison.
Madge delineated these ‘collections’ within taxonomies such as ‘balls’, ‘bones’, ‘shoes’, ‘tumbleweed’, and documented the grouped objects in gridded dispersions, as if recording the finds of her archaeological dig
Figure 4. (a and b) Sally Madge: Acts of Reclamation(details), © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge, Photo: Colin Davison.
Amid the mass of debris patterns emerged. We walked objects about the space inviting dialogue and found conversations.
Figure 5. Sally Madge’s sketch books arranged in an appropriated plan chest, © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge, Photo: Colin Davison.
Plan chests are both agents of storage and structures designed for observation, and so using the horizonal plane of drawers and top, we arranged the sketchpads to survey and look for emblematic themes and to table recurrent ideas
Figure 6. Sally Madge: Acts of Reclamation, © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge, Photo: Colin Davison.
As a project, Scatter was fittingly incomplete. In some cases patches of fabric were pinned in place, ready to be stitched, in others the forms were only partially assembled from the bag of scraps.
Figure 7. Sally Madge: Acts of Reclamation, © Amy Madge and Lucy Madge, Photo: Colin Davison.
The Scatter cushions as displayed on a series of distinctive blue pallets, an equal and complementary bridge between the dominant gallery floor and the objects on display.
