Madeline Bishop is a photo artist now based in Melbourne. However, she grew up in Canberra, began her career here, and regularly visits the capital - and her family - when you-know-what permits. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours) at the ANU in 2013, before gaining her Master of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of Melbourne in 2016.
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Some, if not all, of Bishop's family members have been subjects for her evocative people imagery. So too, many friends have found themselves called on as subjects. Her 2014 show at PhotoAccess exploring the complexity of sisterhood and female relationships is a case in point.
This artist has had considerable success, including being a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize, the Alan Fineman New Photography Award, the National Photographic Portrait Prize, and the Maggie Diaz Photography Prize.
She was also artist in residence at Canberra's PhotoAccess in 2014, photographer in residence at Carriageworks (NSW 2018), and was a Firecracker Photographic Grant winner (Britain 2020).
In addition to participating in numerous group shows, Bishop has had at least 13 solo exhibitions commencing with three in Canberra - Familial/Familiar at the ANU in 2013, then 80 Denier at PhotoAccess and Monuments at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, both in 2014.
Since then, she has also exhibited in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Tasmania. Right now, her Without Your Mother series is showing at Sawtooth ARI gallery in Launceston.
In 2016 Bishop won the Iris Award (Perth Centre of Photography, WA). Her winning image, Liz and Talulah, was from The In Between series exhibited here at PhotoAccess in early 2018. That series explored the construction of women's identities and the development of relationships within domestic space, using her share house as a site and constructed photographic images as a tool to "consider the social malleability of liminal space and the relationships forged within it".
Now she has just won the Iris Award again with her image Neil and Vasantha from another series, Without your mother. Her artist statement for this series reads, "We begin our lives looking for our mothers. Do we ever stop looking for them and do they ever stop looking for us? As we grow, we attempt to detach ourselves in order to become independent and live adult lives. What remnants of this relationship that defines our early lives remain in the distance of adulthood? Our memories morph, the details become duller and distorted over time and we're left with a summarised version of what might have happened, similar to a photograph. Some edges will blur and some will sharpen until those are the only parts we can remember."
Those who consider photography prizes awarding single images to be unfortunate would be extremely pleased that Bishop has had opportunities to show the full series from which her Iris Award prize winners have come.
The artist's website, madelinebishop.com, seems to me to present her works very much as she generally presents them in exhibitions. It also includes images showing her installations in galleries, which reveal her choices to sometimes hang works near the floor - or even on it. At least some photo historians would wish she had also shown images of exhibitions that included people viewing the works, considering such shots can reveal a great deal about the public response to an exhibition.
Canberra can be proud of Bishop - and indeed of many other artist graduates from the ANU. Hopefully, those who are collectors include some of her works in their collections.
