Madison Bycroft

Madison Bycroft (Australia, 1987) lives and works in Marseille. A graduate of the University of South Australia and the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, they work with video, sculpture and performance. Madison Bycroft’s research extends to forms of reading and writing, expression and refusal, exploring how we might reimagine “reading” (in its extended sense) and understanding, not as accomplishment, but as relationship. Madison Bycroft has presented their work in Beirut, Singapore and New York, as well as in France at CAC Brétigny, the Rennes Biennial and the Palais de Tokyo. In 2022, several performance projects led them to present their work at the Art Basel fair in Switzerland, in Cordoba’s botanical gardens and at MAXXI L’Aquila. More recently, they presented Joystick, a video game created in collaboration with Ubisoft.

At Villa Medici, Madison Bycroft is conducting a three-part research program to develop a film project entitled Cena Trimalchio, an adaptation of fragments 28 to 79 of Petronius’ Satyricon. The first part of the research focuses on Roman elegance in the age of Nero and Petronius, and includes a study of the Satyricon. The second section focuses on the dinner table and the feast, while the final section concerns the “augur”, an ancient Roman figure capable of interpreting fortuitous phenomena as omens. Attention to the horizon, goal-directed thought, wandering narratives and disorientation will link these different investigations.