Madi Acharya-Baskerville MRSS won the Royal Society of Sculptors’s First Plinth: Public Art Award 2023 and her inaugural public art commission The Double Act was on show at the Dora House sculpture terrace in the summer of 2024.

As part of the award, Madi had an exhibition called ‘Caught In The Act’ of new mixed media sculptures and ceramics, and she very generously invited me to engage in the themes of the exhibition. 

“Acharya-Baskerville’s South Asian heritage continually influences her practice which explores cultural difference and gender identity in the context of climate change. Caught In The Act explores the moment where something occurs which is intended to be hidden. Instead, it becomes noticed, blatant and shared in public. This is in the spirit of something playful and humorous which is visual but tricky to articulate. Through the idea that something occurs or is placed where it should not be or does not belong, the ‘interloper’ prevails. The outsider is trying to negotiate the inside, observing from the margins but this is just the starting point for subversion, the joyous celebration of difference and diversity. 

Colourful, texturally noisy forms with their history all over them, Ryder’s works created from foil and paint come about from layers of experimental processes with the intention of defying territorial categorisation and embracing art and life as an ever-changing temporal scope. 

Artists Madi Acharya-Baskerville MRSS and Sarah Ryder were in conversation with curator and writer Jes Fernie on 27 June and you can watch the recording on our Vimeo Channel.”

https://sculptors.org.uk/about/past-exhibitions/caught-in-the-act

Photo credit: Mike Glide