“I’m a huge champion of creativity – it’s the great unifier”
— Bethan Maddocks
Bethan Maddocks is an artist who works with archives, communities and organisations to collect stories and make socially engaged, site-specific artwork.
Often working with light, paper, fabric and found objects she creates interactive, tactile sculpture and installations. Narratives gathered through conversation and collaborative making are constructed into playful, transformative artwork.
She works regularly with BALTIC centre of contemporary art, Museums Northumberland and Unfolding theatre. She is the 2019 winner of The Dover Prize, as well as winner of The Culture Award for Museum of the year 2019, for The Fallen Forest.
Artworks
Finders Seekers, Greenfield Arts, January – March 2021
Seventy, South Shields District Hospital, 2019
Fallen Forest, Woodhorn Museum, 2018 - 2019
Floraphone, Woodhorn Museum, 2019
From Juniper Branches grow, Wray Castle, Windermere, 2018
Book of Shadows, Saltwell Park, Gateshead, 2016
Winding Windows, Woodhorn Museum, 2015
Home to Land, Coatham Marsh, 2012
Performance
The Quest of Missing Questions, Woodhorn Museum, 2020
Christmas Carol, Literary and Philosophical society, Newcastle, 2019
Frost of Forgetfulness, Woodhorn Museum, 2016
Everything There Ever Was, Crimdon Dene, 2018
Workshops
BALTIC, Freelance Arts team, 2007 - present
NHS & Age Concern, South Tyneside
Creative Age, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Equal Arts
Homing, Ashington Northumberland
Museums Northumberland, Woodhorn Museum, Berwick Museum, Morpeth Bagpipe Chantry and Hexham Old Gaol
Residencies
Studio Garonne, France, 2019
Borneo Bengkal, Borneo and North England, 2018
Outlandia, Glen Nevis, 2015
Green TV, Coatham March
Selected Artworks
Finders Seekers
Commissioned by Greenfield Arts, January – March 2021
Shaped by conversations with community participants about possibility, enquiry, challenge and changing perspectives. In response, Bethan created an eco-system; a collection of artworks that interlink with each other, combining tools and human-made objects of exploration and elevation with seeds, roots and ‘rewilding’ nature.
The exhibition invites the viewer to enter a child-like world; a paper made forest full of metaphor, imagination and elevation.
Floraphone
Woodhorn Museum 2019
Commissioned by Woodhorn Museum “The Floraphone” was a site specific, interactive work combining moving sculpture, horticulture and sound, to playfully explore the internal life of plants.
Exhibited alongside Matt Stokes’ The Sound Mirror, it took inspiration from his research into the story of an orchid grown and named in honour of footballing legend Jackie Milburn.
The work featured sound design by Nick John William, and textiles elements created in collaboration with Catriona Maddocks and Amber Zamani-Esskeli.
Book of Shadows
Saltwell Park, Gateshead 2016
A series of paper-cut artworks that utilised light and shadow to create a live shadow-animation that told stories of persecution of women over the ages.
The work retold local and historical stories about witch trials and persecution from the middle ages to modern day.