Nunzio Madden, previously known as Natasha Madden, is an Australian-Slovenian artist and musician. Born in 1992, Madden grew up in a rural-residential village in Doreen, country Victoria, where their family ran the local Baptist church.
In 2011, at the age of 19, they studied painting at The University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts campus. In 2014 Madden graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and an Honours degree in Fine Arts. At their graduate exhibition Madden earnt the Blair Trethowan prize, which awarded them with their first solo exhibition, Art House, at TCB Art Inc. They also collaborated with Zac St. Clair on Towards A Comfortable Idleology at Blindside ARI, with catalogue essay written by Lisa Radford.
After graduating, Madden publicly came out as transgender as part of Punk Cafe’s first ever show, Self Titled. They followed this with two exhibitions— Toaster Press Sandwich Maker curated by Christopher LG Hill as part of Hamishi Farah’s Against Dissatisfaction: Trauma of Eros exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary, and Flake, curated by Kate Meakin at Brunswick Sculpture Centre.
In 2016 Madden began to exhibit internationally, beginning with The Bathhouse Show curated by Space Space Gallery and Dorothy Siemens in Komae, Tokyo. They then took their work to Berlin for the 9th Berlin Biennale curated by DIS Magazine at the Akademie der Kunste, collaborating with Rare Candy, Centre For Style and HB Peace. The exhibited work included two hand made handbags, cut from previous paintings and sewn together. While in Berlin, Madden also took part in Havenstrasse, curated by Info-Punkt and Punk Cafe. Further exhibitions in Berlin in 2016 include Tell Me What You Have And I Will Know What You Are curated by Audrey Schmidt for Dissect Journal, and Ying Colosseum Vol. 12: Rave curated by Joel Mu for Ying Colosseum. Both these exhibitions were available to view online as well as briefly in person at an offsite location.
In 2017 Madden exhibited their short film Final Form at Fort Delta Gallery as part of the Midsumma Art Prize exhibition. This film was also included as part of the Queertech.io exhibition at Testing Grounds. Further iterations of Final Form were exhibited in 2017 include “Blame It On The Rain” curated by Fresh and Fruity at the Physics Room, and CLAIRE TOLAN NICLAS I.RUUU NATASHA MADDEN at M.I/mi1glisse, shown in Berlin. Madden then included a final iteration of Final Form in Real Life Fantasies, curated by Patrice Sharkley at Westspace in 2018. For this exhibition, they also rebuilt a 1970s Premier drum kit found in hard rubbish outside their partner’s house, exactly to original specifications.
Their next short film, Bush Doof, documented Madden’s experience of revisiting the Whittlesea Show, a country fair they have attended every year since they were a child. Footage was captured two years apart and then compiled into a two part visual essay. This film screened at Cinema One theatre, curated by Recess Presents for the Hobiennale in Hobart. This film was also screened at Pink Flamingo Cinema, curated by Garden Reflexx, as well as ACE Gallery, curated by Patrice Sharkley. This film was also reviewed by Alice Watson for UN Magazine, and Sally Olds for Recess Presents.
Turning back towards physical materials, in 2018, Madden exhibited a series of modified robotic dolls, which performed a choreographed dance in sync. These dolls were exhibited and performed as part of Personal Touch, curated by Boe-Lin Bastian for Incinerator Gallery. Madden then collaborated with Frankie Porges and Victoria Todorov for Spilling Through The Gaps, at TCB. This exhibition focused on representations of fat bodies and included a large scale self portrait alongside a childhood self portrait.
In 2019 Madden undertook the massive project of turning pages from their Christian conversion therapy diary into two large scale sheets of paper. These works were shown at Meiji Gallery as part of There’s No Art In Heaven, curated by Audrey Schmidt. These works were shown again in Accumulates In The Throat, Emerges From The Mouth at Kings Artist Run.
During the COVID outbreak, Madden again moved into digital media, beginning by building 3D digital sculptures of their Nanna’s dressmaking sketches. These sculptures were exhibited in a completely virtual 3D on Mozilla Hubs, curated by Sebastian Quast for Ille Digital. They also sent sheets of handmade paper to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which was documented online by New Scenario. At the end of lockdowns, Madden produced several large scale paintings for 4am Flaming Arrows, curated by Jemi Gale at the Bundoora Art Homestead. These paintings were all replicas and various iterations of the well known “cursed crying boy painting”, originally painted by Giovanni Bragolin.
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