Through video, performance and sculpture, Madison Bycroft explores an animist way of being in the world, rethinking what it means to be a person and how we might understand, relate, and communicate with others. How does language, representation or the archive limit our perspective? How can we know differently within these systems? Bycroft’s video and performance works often present as short experiments in unlearning the self or traditional modes of being, and explore the practice of empathy and processes of becoming other. Through sculpture, she immerses herself within the world of objects and how they resonate with us and how they might become animated. Bycroft often works with forms that are strange and unrecognisable, and border on weird or unusual. In lieu of categorical and colonizing thought, Bycroft is interested in relational understanding, something which requires compassion: in Latin, a feeling with that extends to difference—to the animal and other persons—creating a sense of communion with the world.

Madison Bycroft (born 1987, Adelaide, South Australia) completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honors at the University of South Australia in 2012. She has exhibited in group and solo shows throughout Australia and recently in Canada, in public, commercial and artist run galleries, as well experimenting with non-traditional sites. She has a multi-media practice, including video, sculpture and performance. Bycroft is the recipient of the 2014 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships, awarded for one year of study overseas in the visual arts. Bycroft has been selected for safARI in 2014 – the fringe festival to the Sydney Biennale.