Design and Art Australia Online

Mandy Martin who first emerged as a political activist printmaker and painter, was born in Adelaide in 1952 and studied at the South Australian School of Art from 1972 to 1975. She first came to prominence as one of the activists in the Women’s art movement, and exhibited in Fantasy and Reality, alongside Jude Adams, Frances Phoenix and Toni Robertson. She soon came to the attention of James Mollison who purchased some of her early screen-prints for the National Gallery’s collection
After she moved to Canberra with her first husband, the artist Robert Boynes, she taught at the Canberra School of Art at the Australian National University from 1978 until 2003.
After she became a full-time artist Martin relocated to rural New South Wales. Her contribution to the university was so valued that on her departure she was appointed a Fellow of the University until 2008 when she became Adjunct Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, a position she held until 2018.
The new appointment reflected the change in the focus of her art as she moved from a tough critique of how women, especially lowly paid women workers, were treated to an awareness of the fragile environment and the damage being wrought by climate change.
Many of her large-scale paintings served as a critique of the degradation of the land in both rural and urban Australia. In 1988 Red Ochre Grove, which shows the fragility of the land, was commissioned for the main committee room at the new Australian Parliament House.
In 2017 a touring exhibition of her paintings demonstrated the fragility of land damaged by coal mining and poor management.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2021