The Geelong Gallery has launched an exhibition that presents a selection of works by internationally acclaimed Australian artist Mandy Martin this week.
Mandy Martin – A Persistent Vision features a series of locally significant works spanning Martin’s 45-year career that were gifted to the gallery shortly before her death in 2021.
Geelong Gallery director and chief executive Jason Smith said the works, many of them prints and based around themes of class struggles, industrialisation and the colonisation of the environment, were highly relevant to Geelong.
“From her work from the 1970s and through to 2017, it’s relevant to Geelong as a city with an industrial heritage perched on the water in a remarkable landscape rich in indigenous history and industrial progress,” Smith said.
“It’s relevant to all those people still living in Geelong who spent their lives working at the Ford factory, or Alcoa. There’s an honouring of those workers.
“It’s also relevant because some of the works were actually made here on the south coast. One issue with which Mandy’s work engaged was that you can’t have industry perched on the water’s edge and not have consequences, not have effects on pristine natural habitats.
“Also, one of our specialties here at Geelong Gallery is Australian printmaking, so she decided we should have as much of her print history as we possibly could.”
Martin was a progressive feminist artist who held an active commitment to the environment and examined through her work the European and industrial colonisation of Australia.
Mr Smith said the exhibition drew its name from Martin’s unceasing questioning of the effects of social divides and “economically essential” industry on the land.
“She’s a wide-ranging artist, but this exhibition has a real consistency in terms of her approach to industrial sites and images as symbols of human impact,” he said.
“It’s important to note that this exhibition is a partial one, it’s a slice of her work. And it’s a slice that’s relevant to Geelong, so we put together these works to tell that industrial story.”
Mandy Martin – A Persistent Vision is open until Sunday, February 5, 2023.
