Madeleine Kelly‘s multifaceted practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation. Her work moves fluidly between figuration and abstraction, weaving together art historical, scientific, and ecological concerns. Recurring motifs such as birds and light serve as symbols of communication, kinship, and the interconnectedness of natural and cultural systems.
During her residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Madeleine Kelly is developing a new body of work that asks how we might reattune our attention to the world around us. She explores birds and sunlight not merely as natural phenomena, but as agents within complex networks. At the heart of the project is the sun—a force of energy and order that shapes biological, social, and cultural rhythms. Birds become living carriers of a language that transcends the human, embodied in patterns of flight, song, and movement.
Berlin offers a unique context for this inquiry. Madeleine Kelly draws on the ornithological collections of the Museum of Natural History, as well as archival material from the Max Planck Institute and the historical Rossitten Bird Observatory. A critical strand of her research engages with the legacy of 19th-century naturalist Amalie Dietrich, who collected plant and animal specimens—including birds now housed in Berlin—during her time in colonial Australia. The artist responds to this colonial history by transforming, fragmenting, and recontextualizing visual and material references from these collections, confronting the violent entanglements of scientific exploration and cultural erasure.
Through painting, sculpture, and sound, Madeleine Kelly creates a poetic, sensorial environment where historical, ecological, and aesthetic threads intertwine. Her project invites viewers to feel their way into new modes of relating—to light, to the natural world, and to the complex legacies of the past.