Heat-her exhibited as part of They Had Four Years, Generator Projects, Dundee, 2022

Statement taken from original exhibition text:
Madeleine Kaye graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone with a BA in Fine Art. She is an artist concerned with language, contradiction, and intimacy, finding moments of translation while searching for objects with multiple histories and identities. Currently her practice is an examination of the feminine and the flame. Beginning as a concentration on the word ‘heather’, guillotining this word into two parts; ‘heat-her’. Interpreting this as a plant, pronoun, fire, and instruction. Both domestic and dangerous, this becomes a description of the historic witch character. This has led to a collection of found, grown, and handmade materials, all used to explore personal connections to the flame. Following the witch’s identity from a pointy hat, to the execution pyre, to the smell of a drunken cigarette burn on a polyester dress. Critiquing the persecuted, imagined, and romanticise image we have of the witch, and seeing what can be gained from their emotional and sensory reality. Collecting foreign objects to understand the lighting of the fire.