Tricia Middleton’s sculptural practice seeks to destabilize the boundary between what is and is not form through experimentation with time and force. Considering the dissolution of the self or art-making as a kind of self-destructive process to connect with the deeper unconscious, her work most often engages notions surrounding “good” and “bad” taste as aesthetic preference and how this connects to capitalist process as ideological form. Aesthetics can be understood as something Middleton’s work performs rather than an intrinsic value to it. The inevitable movement of all material towards collapse alongside processes of accretion and decomposition occurring in the natural world is also a significant focus of this work. The slow erosion of form, architecture and the city itself through natural influences such as weather and time, alongside consideration of the possible sentience of these forms is a source of great curiosity for Middleton, as she sees the creation and destruction of these forms as analogous to the workings of history and economic forces. Her work seeks to mobilize these various phenomena to manifest the interior processes of the mind, itself an abstract reflection of the creation and destruction of form, as such Middleton’s work may be considered as materialized thought at the edge of becoming something, still unknown.

Born in 1972 in Vancouver, Tricia Middleton lives and works in Montreal. She attended Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1997) and completed her MFA at Concordia University (2005). Recipient of the Victor Martyn Lynch Staunton Award in 2010, her works are collected by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as well as multiple private collections. Her recent solo exhibitions have been mounted in multiple gallery throughout Canada, such as Dunlop Art Gallery (2015); Jessica Bradley Gallery (2014); Oakville Galleries (2012); Mercer Union, Toronto (2011); Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal (2009). Her work has been included in several group exhibitions, including Misled by Nature: Contemporary Art and the Baroque at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2012) and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2014); Nothing to Declare: Recent Sculpture from Canada, the Power Plant, Toronto (2010); the Québec Triennial, Musée d’art Contemporain, Montréal (2008) and De-con-structions, the National Gallery of Canada (2007). In 2016, Middleton will be part of the touring exhibition Material Girls, organized by the Dunlop Art Gallery.

COLLECTIONS

Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal
Private collections

EDUCATION

2005
MFA, Concordia University, Montreal (Canada)

1997
BFA, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver (Canada)