Tricia Middleton (born 1972) is an

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

ist based in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

. Middleton's artistic practice often involves the creation of elaborate, large-scale installations built out of a variety of materials including trash, wax, craft supplies, and other ephemera. She frequently re-purposes excess material from her studio practice in creating new installation and sculpture-based work. Her work has been collected by the

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (, MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it ...

Notable exhibitions

In 2009, Middleton exhibited a large installation at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal, titled ''Dark Souls''. Taking its title from a novel by

Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...

, ''Dark Souls'' was designed to resemble a decaying bourgeois

parlour A parlour (or parlor) is a reception room or public space. In medieval Christian Europe, the "outer parlour" was the room where the monks or nuns conducted business with those outside the monastery and the "inner parlour" was used for necessar ...

and involved five connecting rooms, each filled with garbage and refuse, towering sculptures, and two video projections. In 2012, Middleton created a site-specific installation at the

Oakville Galleries Oakville may refer to: Australia *Oakville, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney, Australia Canada *Oakville, Manitoba, an unincorporated community *Oakville, Ontario, a town in Ontario **Oakville GO Station, a station in the GO Transit network lo ...

at Gairloch Gardens. Titled ''Form is the Destroyer of Force, Without Severity There Can Be No Mercy'', Middleton's installation, like ''Dark Souls'', took found objects like shoes, vases, tea sets, and artificial roses and transformed them into uncanny assemblages covered in wax and glitter. The installation referenced the domestic architecture of the Oakville Galleries at Gairloch Gardens, turning the gallery into a fantastical home in decay. Middleton participated in a large-scale group exhibition titled ''Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque'' organized by the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

, and exhibited at the

Art Gallery of Alberta The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is an art museum in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The museum occupies an building at Churchill Square (Edmonton), Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton. The museum building was originally designed by Donald G. Bittor ...

in Edmonton in 2013, and the

Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA), formerly known as the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), is a museum and art gallery in Toronto, Ontario. It is an independent, registered charitable organization. ...

in Toronto in 2014. The exhibition, which featured other prominent Canadian and international artists including David Altmejd,

Yinka Shonibare Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the bright ...

MBE, and Sarah Sze, considered material excess and theatricality in recent installation art, and questioned the nature-culture divide. Other notable group exhibitions include ''Nothing to Declare: Current Sculpture from Canada'' at

The Power Plant The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery is a Canadian public art gallery located at Harbourfront Centre in the heart of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Gallery is a registered Canadian charitable organization. Initially established in 1976 as ...

in Toronto in 2009, and the Quebec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal in 2008. Middleton was represented by the now-closed Jessica Bradley Gallery in Toronto. There she exhibited small sculptures based on her prior large-scale installations at the commercial gallery, in an exhibition titled ''Tricia Middleton: Making Friends with Yourself'' (2015). In 2023, Middleton published her first book, ''Obsidian Situations'', in which "Parisian

psychogeography Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutionar ...

unfolds through a practice of visionary mediumship drenched in melancholy and punctured by polemics. At once a singular transmission of eternal loss, a hilarious critique of the present, and a painstaking search among the ruins of

rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

, this is writing with the ironic ring of truth."

References

External links

Tricia Middleton's Artist Page

Tricia Middleton's page at ISCP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Middleton, Tricia Living people Artists from Montreal Artists from Vancouver Concordia University alumni 1972 births Canadian installation artists Women installation artists Emily Carr University of Art and Design alumni 21st-century Canadian women artists

Notable exhibitions

Further reading

References

External links