The Lies of the Weatherman, Triangles-Astérides, Marseille, 2025. Photo: Aurélien MoleMonstrum, glazed ceramic, wood, plaster, jesmonite, paint, plastic, 2025
Monstrum, glazed ceramic, wood, plaster, jesmonite, paint, plastic, 2025The Lies of the Weatherman, Triangles-Astérides, Marseille, 2025. Photo: Aurélien MoleThe Sauce of All Order, 4K digital video, single channel, color, 5.1 sound, 2024, 33 minutes, 2024. Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24. Co-produced by steirischer herbst ’24 and Villa Medici – Académie de France. Coll. Centre PompidouWittig Vitium, ADA project, Rome, 2025. Photo: Roberto ApaThe Sauce of All Order, 4K digital video, single channel, color, 5.1 sound, 2024, 33 minutes, 2024. Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24. Co-produced by steirischer herbst ’24 and Villa Medici – Académie de France. Coll. Centre PompidouThe trees (series), glazed ceramics, 2025The trees (series), glazed ceramics, 2025
All messages are emotional, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, 2024. Photo: Des signes
Waterlogue - Four to the floor, detail, 2024
The Siren Song, Villa Medici, Roma, 2024. Photo: Daniele MolajoliWaterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Daniele Molajoli
Waterlogue, Four to the floor, détail, 2024
Waterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Joel WhiteWaterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Joel WhiteFlounder, performance, Museum of Art and History, Geneva, 2024. Photo: MAH Geneva
Interior Rhapsody, LISTE art fair, Basel, 2024. Photo: sissi club
Future, Former, Fugitive, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2019. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Uncomitted Barnacle part 1, performance, Centrale Fies, Tronto, 2021. Photo: Roberta Segata
Through video, sculpture, performance, and drawing, Madison Bycroft is currently engaged with a range of themes: forms of reading and writing, expression, and refusal. These themes enable them to explore the political dimensions of legibility and unintelligibility (reading and being read), through language as well as material, with particular attention to the ways in which “meaning(s)” are conditioned by historical context, certain biases, and above all structures of power. Bycroft investigates how we might reimagine reading in its broadest sense—and understanding—not as activities oriented toward achieving a specific end, but rather as shifting relations that open up spaces—opaque, wandering, fractured. Moving both with and against the current, practices of reparative reading and resistant reading, as well as harmony or misrecognition, are among the tools employed within the economy of legibility and understanding.
Madison Bycroft (they/them), born in 1987 in Tarntanya (Adelaide, Australia), lives and works between Marseille and Paris, France, and teaches with the FKA Critical Practices research group at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem (Netherlands). Bycroft graduated from the University of South Australia (2013) and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2016). They were awarded the Fondation Pernod Ricard Prize (2024) and were a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome (2023).
Their recent solo and group exhibitions include: Krone Couronne, Biel (2025); DS Galerie, Paris (2025); CRAC Occitanie, Sète (2025); ADA Project, Rome (2025); Triangle-Astérides, Marseille (2025); Paris Internationale, Paris (2025); FRAC Corsica, Corte (2024); Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2024); Villa Medici, Rome (2024); Steirischerherbst ’24, Graz (2024); LISTE Art Fair, Basel (2024); Material Art Fair, Mexico City (2024); Sissi Club, Marseille (2023); Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2021); Samstag Museum, Adelaide (2021); Centrale Fies, Trento (2021); Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg (2020); CAC Brétigny, Brétigny (2019); 6th Rennes Biennial, Rennes, Saint-Brieuc (2019); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2019); Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv, Venice (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019).
Bycroft has undertaken residencies at La Ménagerie de Verre, Paris (2026); La Becque, La Tour-de-Peilz (2023); Ateliers de la Ville de Marseille, Marseille (2018–2020); and Triangle-Astérides, Marseille (2017). Their work is held in the collections of the CNAP, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, FRAC Bretagne, and the Centre Pompidou.
The Lies of the Weatherman, Triangles-Astérides, Marseille, 2025. Photo: Aurélien MoleMonstrum, glazed ceramic, wood, plaster, jesmonite, paint, plastic, 2025
Monstrum, glazed ceramic, wood, plaster, jesmonite, paint, plastic, 2025The Lies of the Weatherman, Triangles-Astérides, Marseille, 2025. Photo: Aurélien MoleThe Sauce of All Order, 4K digital video, single channel, color, 5.1 sound, 2024, 33 minutes, 2024. Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24. Co-produced by steirischer herbst ’24 and Villa Medici – Académie de France. Coll. Centre PompidouWittig Vitium, ADA project, Rome, 2025. Photo: Roberto ApaThe Sauce of All Order, 4K digital video, single channel, color, 5.1 sound, 2024, 33 minutes, 2024. Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24. Co-produced by steirischer herbst ’24 and Villa Medici – Académie de France. Coll. Centre PompidouThe trees (series), glazed ceramics, 2025The trees (series), glazed ceramics, 2025
All messages are emotional, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, 2024. Photo: Des signes
Waterlogue - Four to the floor, detail, 2024
The Siren Song, Villa Medici, Roma, 2024. Photo: Daniele MolajoliWaterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Daniele Molajoli
Waterlogue, Four to the floor, détail, 2024
Waterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Joel WhiteWaterlogue, Four to the Floor, 4K digital video, four channels, color, sound, 2024. Photo: Joel WhiteFlounder, performance, Museum of Art and History, Geneva, 2024. Photo: MAH Geneva
Interior Rhapsody, LISTE art fair, Basel, 2024. Photo: sissi club