3 – 22 September 2015
about the exhibition
Mandy Martin was born in Adelaide in 1952 and studied from 1972-75 at the South Australian School of Art. She has been exhibiting since 1977 and has a national and international reputation having held many exhibitions in Australia and internationally including Mexico, the United States of America, France, Germany and Japan. Mandy was a lecturer at the Canberra School of Art from 1978 – 2003, a fellow at the ANU from 2003 – 2008 and has held the position of Adjunct Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU since 2008. Her works are held in many major public collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Australian War Memorial and many regional galleries. In the USA her work is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum New York; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno and many private collections. This is Mandy’s first exhibition of new paintings in Canberra for over twenty years and her first with Beaver Galleries.
“I have lived in the Central West of NSW for 20 years now and in the daily routine on a large property, I have become attuned to changes in the weather. However, I have a heightened state of anxiety that these can be ominous, signs that bigger shifts in climate are on the way. Weather becomes synonymous with mood in this series, so a sublime sunset in my mind can be worrying, an unseasonal snow fall, alarming.Looking out from my studio I can see Cadia Gold Mine, the biggest gold mine in the southern hemisphere and not far beyond that, there is coal and gas mining country. Mining and Climate change weigh heavily on my mind.During this 20 year period a large part of my creative practice has been coordinating art and environment projects. Currently I am fully engrossed in the 10th such project, this ongoing project is in Arnhem Land, Arnhembrand. Living on Healthy Country. The paintings in A Change in the Weather arise from the moments in between those art and environment projects and my series’ about mining and climate change.” Mandy Martin September 2015
