Through sculptural installations Madeleine Marg creates peculiar depictions of domestic environments. She investigates the relationship between humanity, nature and digital technologies. When creating The grass under my feet presented within This 26, Marg speculated on a future where, due to the environmental destruction of green spaces, nature only exists within controlled manufactured forms. In order to satisfy humanity’s inherent connection to the global biosphere, nature becomes re-imagined indoors.
Marg’s work exists within the tension between the artificial and natural. She develops her ideas through material exploration, incorporating second hand synthetic grass, wood, glass, digital systems and polymeric matrices. Through casting she re-contextualises found objects, transforming them into materially contradictory forms. Through construction she anthropomorphises domestic objects. The organic becomes synthetic; a table grows feet. Through the assembly of her work, she juxtaposes the domestic and natural, examining technological control over nature.
The Royal Scottish Academy has played a huge role in the development of my practice both thematically and professionally. I attained two pivotal opportunities from the RSA when graduating from my undergraduate degree.
The first was the invitation to exhibit within their 2025 New Contemporaries exhibition with sixty-three incredible emerging artists from across Scotland. Coming from a small town in Morayshire with limited access to the contemporary art world, the opportunity to exhibit within a professional context strengthened my personal confidence. The RSA provided me with an avenue which made navigating life after art school a much smoother transition, as ultimately it gave me something to work towards.
The second opportunity was the RSA Barns-Graham Travel Award, which enabled me to travel to Gujo Hachiman, Japan to study the art of Shokuhin Sampuru (fake food). This provided me with the opportunity to learn from professional artisans and expand my technical skills in casting and wax. These learnt methodologies have had a profound impact on my material process and how I approach sculpting.
