Decline and Fall

I have always been interested in the built environment since studying Architecture many years ago. One can learn an enormous amount about societies, including our present one, by studying and examining the built environment, its architecture, landscape planning, and the connection between physical space and social consequences. It not only refers to that which is built, arranged, or curated, but also to what is managed, controlled, or allowed to continue. What is referred to as ‘nature’ today can be seen as a commodity that is placed into an environment that is constructed to fulfil the human will and desire. Building construction is responsible for almost 40% of all global carbon emissions, a primary cause of climate change, far higher than any other individual sector.

Since 2015 my practice has focussed on painting, taking aspects of the built environment as its theme and inspiration. Initially I focussed almost entirely on the effects of technology on society as evidenced in the built environment.
Covid lockdown, and consequent physical restriction to my garden and local parks led me to focus on the intersection of the natural world with the built environment, and thence to the subject of climate change.

I create images by collecting a large archive of digital images–my own and found Creative Commons images on the internet. With these, I create digital collages in preparation for my paintings. These images distort spatial perspective and scale, colliding subjects that should not appear together in the same space. For example, in my recent body of work I place giant weeds and plant-life in dramatic church interiors, juxtaposing the ‘unruly’ structure of the plants and the order of the church architecture by playing with transparencies, light, colour, and perspective. My paintings seek to enhance differences and at the same time merge/transpose elements across seemingly unrelated subjects.

Dave Madigan is a painter who works from Pallas Projects/Studios in the Digital Hub, Dublin. He studied Visual Arts Practice in IADT, graduating as a mature student in 2009. 

He creates paintings which reflect his interest and concerns in the social, psychological and political effects of new technologies on today’s society. He uses the traditional medium of oil on canvas.

He has featured in many group exhibitions including at the Joinery, Mermaid Arts Centre, TULCA, DLR, and Annual Exhibitions at RHA Gallery, winning the Friends of the RHA Award for a Senior Artist in 2018; and RUA Annual Exhibitions winning the Paul Henry Landscape Award in 2017. He was awarded the DLR Visual Art Commission in 2022, and the “Landscapes & Oddities” exhibition showed in DLR Lexicon as the result.

His work is featured in many public and private collections including the Office of Public Works, DCU Business School, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.