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Welcome to the Original Seattle Neighborhood – rich in history, arts, culture, and food!
Specialist Gallery presents GROOMING, new sculptures by Madison Donnelly.
Horse hooves are perpetually growing, like human fingernails. When horses are able to run freely, the friction against the earth keeps the hooves trimmed naturally. Domestication interrupted this natural process with the use of horse shoes, now requiring horses to receive further human intervention with specialized trimming and maintenance. Donnelly sees the bathroom as a site of our own domestication and interrupted natural processes. Recently, the maintenance technician for her apartment complex explained that no matter the reason for the call, he was encouraged to execute the cheapest and quickest possible fix. Like the interrupting maintenance of a horse hoof, Donnelly is interested in the triangulation between the tenant, maintenance person, and property owner of a rented property. The bathroom molds, it’s caulked over, then it molds again. Haunted by profit and neglect, the rented apartment bathroom is an overgrown, mildew-smeared garden grotto whose mold and scum is in constant need of temporary fixes.
Madison Donnelly is a sculptor exploring themes of artifice, domestication, ideology, and private property. Her practice examines the psychic impact of systemic neglect: the unkempt human body, rented properties, and animal and planetary neglect. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University ’23 where she was awarded the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize. She has been an artist in residence at Fountainhead in Miami, Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA, SOMA Mexico in Tlaxcala, MX, and UMOCA in Salt Lake City. Madison has shown her work at ACUD Galerie in Berlin, Helena Anrather in NYC, the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, CT, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
