Correspondence from a Thin Place

Barometer Gallery / 13 Gurner St. Paddington / Presented by Kudos
8-15 July 2025

Alluding to histories of pyromancy, an ancient practice where the movements, sounds, and colours of flames are read for omens or messages from another world, Correspondence from a Thin Place asks if and how we can read messages from beyond, who gets to interpret them, and how communication crosses from the immaterial to the material. Here, drawing is a translative medium between worlds, and flame is an interlocutor: something that speaks to those who know how to listen.

Tia Madden’s practice is concerned with the porous boundaries between drawing and writing, the politics of interpretation, the poetics of illegibility, and the potential for abstract marks to behave communicatively when framed – or misread – as language. Calling on the speculative-fictional and archaeological, she creates expanded drawing installations and asks them to act as vessels for communication— even if they only speak in worlds outside our own.

Open every day: 10 am – 5 pm