2008 Exhibition
Wanderers in the Desert of the Real
4-29 March 2008
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Paddington, Sydney,
Wanderers in the Desert of the Real
This continuing series brings together my cumulative interests from the past decades, all underpinned by a consuming passion for the future of the landscape we inhabit.
The industrial images, some re-workings from the 1980’s are taken up again in recent encounters with Wallerawang Powerhouse and the tailings Dam at Cadia Gold Mine, virtually on my door step in Central West New South Wales. The pristine and resilient landscape always in my minds’ eye and the subject of many of my landscape studies over the past decades is represented here in Tanami, Spinifex Fires. It is juxtaposed with the industrial landscape and in turn the inevitable, during this current period of heightened awareness of global warming, Iceberg painting. These were gleaned in part from helicopter flights on U-Tube around icebergs marooned off New Zealand and also from photographs taken on the recent expedition my friend Tom Griffiths, took to Antarctica. I am indebted to them.
The icebergs and glaciers are a powerful part of contemporary psyche, just as they were during the Maunder Minimum of Brueghel’s 1550 era. Echoes of the Chiliastes and then the late 19th century Millenialists’ fear of the industrial era and the demise of civilisation are found in John Martin’s Macbeth, painted with glacier as the central motif and also in the towering wave of his The Deluge. JMW Turner associated lightning with the monuments of dead religions; Thunderstorm over Paestum and was devoted to depictions of the sublime terror of landscape; Mer de Glace. His perceptions about the scale and folly of the human footprint, Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps foreshadow the folly and impetuous vain glory of many inland Australian explorers. Many of my paintings since the 1990’s have dwelt on the colonial misreading of our land. In this series the wanderings of E. C. Warburton, emerging from the Great Sandy Desert at night, half dead on his camel, blinded by the desert, carry resonances with Hannibal dwarfed by the snowstorm in the Alps.
Mandy Martin
February 2008
Art Workshops
ARNHEMLAND SUN WATER 2008
Mount Borradaile, May 26-30 2008
Read stories about 2007 and 2008 workshops in Gallery
Future enquiries 2009 to basilhalleditions@bigpond.com
Visiting Gooniyandi Country with Butcher Cherel
Read about this and see pictures in Gallery
Gordale Scar
Last Melbourne Exhibition: Noumenal Salvator Rosa VI
Christine Abrahams Gallery Gallery
Melbourne, November 14- December 9, 2006
www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au
Environmental Projects, 2009- 1995
Photograph: Upcoming Collaborative Project 2009: The Simpson Desert
“Sandhill Camp, Simpson Desert” 2007 is one in a series of 10 landscape studies made in the Simpson Desert. The aim of the works is to represent the landscape as one experiences it when walking through it, that is from a number of different viewpoints of the one place. I aimed to use as little artifice as possible and replace instead simple observation and found pigment combined with natural pigments. All the colours used are naturally sourced earth colours except the titanium white pigment. The “green” is from crushed gravel from the track on our property. The works are a visual record of the ordinary or unremarkable and reveal that this landscape is in fact rich with aesthetic qualities. This in simple terms is the truth to be gained from painting landscape and the intention is to raise awareness of the special and different qualities in the landscape which may not be not immediately obvious.
Mandy Martin June 2008
PREVIOUS PROJECTS
Strata: Deserts Past Present and Future. An Environmental Art Project About a Significant Place.
Martin, M., Robin, L., Smith, M.,Strata: Deserts Past Present and Future July 2005 Goanna Press, Canberra
This book is about diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place. Indigenous knowledge depends on country- country is the context for knowledge and the place where knowledge is significant. Western science, by contrast, typically differentiates between the knowing and the place- in many cases, it seeks knowledge systems, Indigenous, scientific and artistic - and by locating them in a common place we seek co- understanding, for valuing the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
There was an exhibition of art works from all the artists associated with Strata, curated by Tim Rollason, Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, 18- 24 July 2005
Visit http://cres.anu.edu.au/strata/contents.html to read and download the publication.
The Lachlan: Blue-Gold
Martin, M. and Ryan, S.The Lachlan: Blue-Gold 2004, exhibition catalogue
View and download the catalogue: www.lachlan_blue_gold_large.pdf
Land$cape: Gold & Water
Martin, M Land$cape: Gold & Water 2003 exhibition catalogue. Goanna Press, Canberra.
Inflows: The Channel Country
Martin, M., Carruthers, J., Fitzhardinge, G., Griffiths, T., Haynes, P.,
Inflows: The Channel Country 2001 Goanna Press, Canberra
Watersheds: The Paroo to the Warrego
Martin, M., Fitzhardinge, G., Griffiths, T., Haynes, P.,
Watersheds: The Paroo to the Warrego
1999 Goanna Press, Canberra
Tracts: Back O' Bourke
Martin, M., Fitzhardinge, G., Haynes, P., Sinclair, P., Tracts: Back O' Bourke 1996 Goanna Press, Canberra
All publication orders and enquiries where details are not provided can be directed to
www.roslynoxley9gallery.com.au
www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au
Previous Stories
Mandy Martin on Painting Australia ABC series, 2 March 2007. Workshop on location at Ethabuka Reserve, Simpson Desert, Queensland,
part art competition, part art class, part art tour
www.bushheritage.org.au
Survey Exhibition Canberra Museum and Gallery, May- September 2009
Mandy Martin Survey, curated by Peter Haynes
more details to come
NEW PUBLICATIONS
Martin, M.,Absence and Presence in Potter, E., Mackinnon, A., Mckenzie, S., Mckay, J., Fresh Water. New Perspectives on Water in Australia Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Victoria 2007. This book is available on line: http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/ebooks/0-522-85425-7/index.html
Cranston CA, and Zeller, R., The Littoral Zone. Australia Contexts and their Writers " Literature in the Arid Zone" Pp. 70-92 Lynch, T., Rodopi Press. Amsterdam- New York NY 2007
Dickman, C., Lunney, D., Burgin, S., Animals of the Arid Zone. Out on their Own? " Science in place and time: archaeology, ecology and environmental history" Robin, L., Smith, M., Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Mosman, N.S. W. 2007
Herausgegeben von Regel, W., Köhler …hoch gerühmt, fast vergessen, neu gehessen.... Der italienische Maler and poet Salvator Rosa. Studien zur Neubertung. Königshausen & Neumann. Würzburg 2007