About

The main themes of Jane Madsen’s work are: home, place, space, territory, landscape, absence, duration, literature and architecture/s. These themes are linked by a sense of materiality and space. Her work is experimental, poetic and interdisciplinary. She questions how can we live with landscape, how place generates practice, where we can live, what is lost when we take from the landscape and how territory becomes contested. A number of films are developed from literary sources with reference to philosophy and politics. Her work includes 16 mm film and video – installations, experimental films and videos as single and multi-screen works and essay documentary.

Her films and film and video installations have been shown in galleries, festivals and cinemas throughout the UK, EU and Australia, including, Tate Britain (as a part of the Blake exhibition), Venice Bienale at the Palazzo Bembo, 9th Experimental film Week, Madrid, and the University of Ghent (Belgium). Artist residencies: Learning Stone at Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust, July 2012; the Jan Van Eyck Academy (Maastricht), 2003, ASK Department of Architecture, University of Ghent, 2003.

Jane Madsen has written and published on architecture, film and art. She has a background in art, film and architectural history and theory and in fine art practice and has a practice-based PhD in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, with practice supervised at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London – thesis entitled: Kleist and the space of collapse.

She has taught at the University of the Arts London, in theory and history and fine art moving image. She currently teaches at London College of Communication, UAL.

After arriving in London from Melbourne in the early 1990s she worked at the London Filmmakers Co-Operative (later Lux), from 1993-1996, working with artists to facilitate experimental film, installation, performance, animation, video and electronic arts and participated in preparations for relocation to a new building in Hoxton Square, London.

FILM / VIDEO / INSTALLATIONS / SCREENINGS     (selected)

2017      The Landscape and the Eye: Ways of Looking essay documentary. (forthcoming) John Berger Now Conference, Christ College University, Canterbury

2015      Nicodemus Knob Panorama Installation. Light box projection. Fuji 220 reversal film 24 6x6.

––         Das Gewölbe 1800 (The Arch 1800). Installation: 16 mm film loop. Animation b&w.

2013      Venetian Drift 2003-2013 Helen Kirwan & Jane Madsen. 2 x screen video 10 mins colour. Exhibition: Personal Structures with David Goldenberg
              & post autonomy group collateral event55ªEsposizione Internazionale d'Arte la Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo Bembo, Italy

––         Die Insel Ziegenwerder, Frankfurt an der Oder Installation: Video 5 mins, colour.

––          Kleistgrab, Kleiner Wannsee (Kleist Grave, Lesser Wannsee) Installation: Video 5 mins, colour.

2012      Off cuts: Portland 3f 80 glass mounted slides continuous time projections. Exhibition: Cinema as Object, Woburn Research Space, Slade, 2013. 

2010       Portland Nos. 2 – 5 (North of Wallsend Cove to Mutton Cove, Portland Bill, West Weares, Independent quarry, Tout Quarry)
               Installation: 2 x 16mm film loops. Colour 8 min. Exploration of Portland Bill’s quarries as space, landscape and an architecture of absence.  
               Screening:  Maritime Mix Festival,  Cultural Olympiad, Weymouth & Portland, 2012

2009      Making Sense: Libraries Video 3mins. Screening: Conference Cambridge University. Colloquium on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

––          Elephant Steel 16mm 8mins. Exploration of the Brutalist architecture of Faraday monument, Elephant and Castle.
               Screening: Stones of Menace art/architecture event on Brutalism,  St. Paul's Bow Common E3, 2010

2003      Venetian Drift Helen Kirwan and Jane Madsen Video 18 mins colour [Venice/Ghent. Screening: installation ASK Ghent

2002      London Stock 16mm 8min film loop. About London bricks. Screening: Analogue Recurring 21 July 2017, 16 mm loop

 ––         Rum Jelly video 9min loop. Optimism in the face of dynastic decline.  Exhibition: Yesvember, House Gallery, Peckham Rd, London, November 2004. 

––         The Knowledge, Parts 1-3, video 30 min loop. Installation. The city as habitat. Video installation. Group Exhibition: Parallel Realities,
              Quicksilver Place Gallery, Middlesex University.

––         Paperwork video 10 minutes. Installation; group exhibition: M17, Arthouse Gallery, Lewisham. 

2000      C of E M  16mm film loop installation. Group exhibition: Real Bodies, Virtual City. outsidedge lambeth riverside artists collective,
               St. Peters Heritage Centre, Vauxhall, London.

1998      Hercules Road 16mm 20min colour.  Made in the Lambeth street where William Blake lived. Filmed over four seasons; explores the architecture of the
              mundane and ideas about desire, evokes Blake’s belief that the visionary is made from the vernacular. Funded by: London Production Fund.
              Screenings: Nov 2000–Jan 2001: Tate Britain, William Blake Exhibition; 2000: Anti-Authoritarian Poets on Film, Melbourne Underground Film Festival.
              1999: 9th Madrid Experimental Film Festival Week, Madrid. 1999; invited artist international symposium, Project: Security, Jan van Eyck Akedemie
              Maastricht, Netherlands

1994      Home 16mm 15 mins colour. Found footage S8 shot in UK, Sydney optically printed to 16 mm.  Screenings: part of multiple four-film projection with
              James Swinson & Evan English for Crowded House (band) tour: Wembley Arena, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin etc.
              Produced by Evan English and Nick Seymour.

1989      First Time Tragedy Second Time Farce  16mm 75 min, UK/Australia.  Co-producer/director/writer with John Cumming and James Swinson. 
              Essay documentary about nationalism and cultural identity during Australia’s bicentennial celebrations and the Aboriginal protests against them.
              Funded with assistance from Film Victoria. Broadcasts:  1992 RTE television, Ireland, 1990 CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association)
              Screenings: 1991 Amnesty International Film Festival, Watershed,  1990 Bristol; Watermans Arts Centre, London.  
              Print purchased by The Aboriginal Institute, Canberra. 

PUBLICATIONS / PRESENTATIONS / CONFERENCES (selected)

2017     John Berger Now, Christ College University, Canterbury (September), The Landscape and the Eye: Ways of Looking video essay documentary

2011       Interstices 13: Technics, Memory and the Architecture of History ed. Stephen Loo and Andrew Douglas. Refereed paper: ‘The space of collapse: A two part terrain’ ISSN: 1170-585X            
              Conference: Architecture Dept., University of Tasmania.

2011       Architecture @ the Edge, Association Architecture Schools of Australasia Conference, 18–21 Sept, Deakin University.                                                                        
              Refereed paper: ‘Portland Stone: an architectural consideration of place, collapse and absence’

2010      PhD Research Projects 2010, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 2010, ISBN 978-0-9558331-6-8. 'Kleist’s "Earthquake in Chile" as an architecture of catastrophe and collapse'

2008     Philosophy in Art, ed. Richard Osborne, London: Zidane Press, 2007. ISBN. 0-9548832-2-X. Book chapter: ‘Marion’s Death Drive: Psycho driving and the car’ 

2004     Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics, no. 13. London: Dept. of Creative, Critical & Communication Studies, University of Greenwich, 2004.                  
              Article: ‘The Painted Book’ 

2003     Venice as Theatre, Helen Kirwan and Jane Madsen, in ASK! Magazine, [Omtrent de Biennale van Venetië [2003] Published: Dept of Architecture,                      
              University of Ghent:  pp. 9-16. 

2003     What is a Book? Jan van Eyck Akademie Maastricht, Netherlands. Invited Keynote international roundtable. Paper:  ‘A Book is a Good Design’.

2001     Issues in Contemporary Culture & Aesthetics, no. 12, Dept. Theory, Jan Van Eyck Publishers, Netherlands, 2001, pp. 99-101. Refereed article: ‘Reading, Writing and Recidivism’

1998     Cantrill’s Film Notes Nos. 87/88, (Melbourne: 1998), pp. 46-51, ISSN Article: ‘Making Hercules Road’

1995     5th Madrid Experimental Film Week. International Jury panel, invitation of British Council. 

1987     Blonksi, Annette, Barbara Creed, and Frieda Freiberg, (eds.) Don't Shoot Darling Richmond, Australia: Greenhouse Publications, 1987. ISBN: 978-0864360588.  
             Book chapter: ‘Listening at Closed Doors: A consideration of the use of sound in Behind Closed Doors’

1987     T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith (eds.) History on/and/in Film. History & Film Association of Australia: Perth, WA.  [mcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/hfilm/contenth.html]  
             Refereed article: ‘Cutting Through the Seventies to Find the Thirties:  A Consideration of Fortini-Cani as Marxist Reflection’.