Madison Bycroft

Madison Bycroft (Australia, 1987) lives and works in Marseille. A graduate of the University of South Australia and the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, they work with video, sculpture and performance. Madison Bycroft’s research extends to forms of reading and writing, expression and refusal, exploring how we might reimagine “reading” (in its broadest sense) and understanding, not as achievement, but as relationship.

Madison Bycroft has displayed their work in Beirut, Singapore and New York, but also in France, notably at the CAC Brétigny, the Rennes Biennale and the Palais de Tokyo. In 2022, several performance projects led them to present their work at the Art Basel fair in Switzerland, in the botanical gardens of Cordoba, and at MAXXI L’Aquila. More recently, they introduced Joystick, a video game created in collaboration with Ubisoft.

At the French Academy in Rome, Madison Bycroft conducts a three-part research project to develop a film entitled Cena Trimalchio, an adaptation of fragments 28 to 79 of Petronius’ Satyricon. The first part of the research focuses on Roman elegance in the time of Nero and Petronius, and includes a study of the Satyricon. The second part concerns the dinner table and the feast, while the last part concerns the “augury”, a figure of ancient Rome capable of interpreting incidental phenomena considered as omens. Attention to the horizon, goal-oriented thinking, errant narratives and disorientation will link these different forms of research together.

 

Photo portrait © Madison Bycroft
Video portrait © Laurent Perreau pour l’Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis