Madeleine Child studied in the United Kingdom at Camberwell School of Art, the Royal College of Art and St Martins School of Art and in New Zealand at the Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin.  

For a number of years Child was Head of Ceramics and a senior lecturer at the Dunedin School of Art. She has had artist residencies in Australia, Europe, the USA and New Zealand and her work is represented in both public and private collections both in New Zealand and overseas.

One of Child’s best-known and loved creations is her playful, brightly-coloured, ceramic popcorn:

The popcorn started with an argument with my (then) small children about junk food, but I gave in and then, annoyingly, become fascinated with its fleshy gorgeousness and organic fecundity and rococo decadence. It is a form that feels right to be making in clay - likely the only material for popcorn’s mad, endless variations and non- uniformity; formless but recognisable as a very particular form; a form which somehow captures its own explosion.

Madeleine Child

‍