Madeleine Collopy’s paintings explore the relationship between movement, memory and place. Grounded in the physicality of making, her practice is intuitive and process driven, drawing on her background in dance and an enduring interest in the body moving through space. Gesture, repetition and rhythm become a kind of visual choreography, with forms built up, disrupted and reworked across the surface.
Living and working on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula, Collopy is continually influenced by the Australian landscape and the particular shifts in colour, light and atmosphere that surround her. Rather than depicting the landscape directly, these observations are absorbed and reappear through colour, movement and form. The landscape becomes something experienced physically and psychologically, informing the work without becoming its subject.
More recent paintings extend these ideas into childhood memory and sensory experience. Familiar colours, repeated patterns, objects and fragments of place are recalled through a process that is often lucid yet incomplete. Collopy is interested in the way memory rarely returns as a complete narrative, but instead through seemingly insignificant details, a particular colour, a pattern, a texture, an object or the feeling of a room.
Through layering, repetition and instinctive mark making, the paintings move between recognition and abstraction. Forms appear, disappear and resurface, reflecting the way memories are revisited and altered over time. Across the work, Collopy considers how experience is carried through the body and how memory, movement and place accumulate beneath the surface, quietly shaping the way we see and inhabit the world.
Madeleine completed her Bachelors in Dance at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and Edith Cowan University in 2008, and in 2016 graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design from AC ARTS and Flinders University. She has been awarded several notable art prizes and currently exhibits her work via BMG Art and Transforma in Adelaide. Her work is also sold in private collections.
Madeleine Collopy, Visual Artist
EDUCATION
2016 Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design, Adelaide College of Arts, Flinders University, South Australia, Australia
2008 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance), Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University,
Western Australia, Australia
EXHIBITIONS
Painting- BMG Gallery, October 2025, Adelaide, Australia
Pretty Big Painting Show- Good Bank Gallery, January 2025, Adelaide, Australia
SALA- Transforma furniture September 2024, Adelaide, Australia
Realise You’re Home- Group exhibition, Transforma Furinutre, 2022 Adelaide
Three Female Artists- Group show, 2021, BMG Art, Adelaide, Australia
Dive Too Deep- Solo exhibition, Raphael Quality Goods, Adelaide Australia
Spring Show- group exhibitions, 2019, Studio Gallery, Waterloo Sydney
Open Studios- School of Visual Art, 2019, Chelsea, New York City
High Tension- Solo exhibition, Ground Floor Gallery, Bay Discovery Centre, August 2018. Adelaide, Australia
Studio Gallery Melbourne, group exhibition, gallery opening at Studio Gallery Melbourne, 2018 Melbourne, Australia
Without Retreat, BMG Gallery, February 2018, Adelaide, Australia
Memory Movement, solo exhibition, Fisher Jeffries in association with Worth Gallery, July 2017, Adelaide, Australia
Helpmann Graduate show, February 2017, Torrens Parade Ground, Adelaide, Australia
AC ARTS Selected Graduate show, Hill Smith Gallery, August 2016, Adelaide, Australia
Indecisive Face, group exhibition, Tenth and Gibson, June 2015, Adelaide, Australia
AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Scholarship residency- School of Visual Art, Chelsea New York City- July 2019
Award winner Helpmann Academy student prize, Adelaide, Australia February 2017
Scholarship Worth Gallery, Adelaide, Australia, February-June 2017
Dance Compass choreography award winner, Sydney, Australia, January 2009
ADDITIONAL RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Scholarship Worth Gallery, Adelaide, Australia, February-June 2017
Award winner Helpmann Academy student prize, Adelaide, Australia February 2017
Coordinator and choreographer Essential Talent School, Adelaide, Australia, 2015-2016
Freelance dancer, Stephen Petronio company, New York City, 2010
Freelance dancer/workshops, Gallim Dance Company, New York City, February 2010
Freelance choreographer, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, June 2009, Western Australia, Australia
Dance Compass participant and choreography award winner, Sydney, Australia, January 2009,
GROUPS AND ASSOCIATIONS
Carer and group instructor Down Syndrome South Australia (DSSA) Dance Down, Adelaide, Australia, 2018
Adelaide Visual Artists
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Press:
‘Full Throttle’, Adelaide Review Magazine, Interview with Jane LLewelyn, February 2018
‘Artist Profile: Madeleine Collopy’, Adelaide Review Magazine, interview with Jane Llewelyn, June 2017
