Madeleine Fenwick

Madeleine Fenwick (b. London, 1988; lives and works in Valletta, Malta) is a sculptor and installation artist known for works that treat material as memory in motion – copper, brass and stone objects in which gesture, rhythm and deep time converge.

Trained in London (Heatherleys School of Art; BA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School, 2012), Fenwick relocated to Malta in 2014 – a decision that reshaped her practice. In her own words, the limestone city and the Grand Harbour shifted her focus “from image to system”: from what things look like to how they are made and held together. Working from her Valletta studio with local artisans and engineers – and, as artist in residence with ŻfinMalta, with dancers, learning how gesture becomes pattern – she builds works that behave less like objects than like sites. Extended working periods in Mexico City since 2022 expanded this vocabulary toward myth and cycle; her largest installation to date was shown at Salon Acme, Mexico City (2025), following her site-specific installation Granny’s Giant Teeth (Migrating Series) at the Malta Biennale 2024.

Fenwick’s core question is disarmingly concrete: what do materials remember – and what do we make them carry? Her answer takes the form of works that feel excavated rather than produced, as if recovered from a ritual we have collectively forgotten – yet set in motion, waiting for a body to complete them.

B. 1988, London · Heatherleys School of Art (2006–08) · BA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School (2012) · Studio in Valletta since 2014 · Malta Biennale 2024 (Marti-Archive Pavilion, Biblioteca Nacional) · Salon Acme Ed. 12, Mexico City (2025) · Solo: Thinking in Different Languages, 2B Gallery, Malta (2025) · Also: European Parliament, Brussels (2017) · Mdina Cathedral Biennale (2015) · Residencies: StudioBlock 74 & Ruido Blanco, Mexico (2022) · ŻfinMalta (artist in residence) · Media: sculpture, kinetic objects, installation, painting, works on paper