Design and Art Australia Online

Mandy Martin who first emerged as a political activist printmaker and painter, was born in Adelaide in 1952, the daughter of Peter Martin, a professor of Botany and Beryl Martin, a watercolor painter. She first studied at the South Australian School of Art from 1972 to 1975. She first came to prominence as one of the political activists in the Women’s art movement, and exhibited in Fantasy and Reality, alongside Jude Adams, Frances Phoenix and Toni Robertson. Her feminism was very much tinged with political activism. Some of her early works included posters against the Vietnam War and other acts of American imperialism. Along with fellow artists Ann Newmarch and Robert Boynes she became one of the activist of the Progressive Art Movement.
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.
In 1995 she relocated to Mandurama in rural New South Wales. She continued her close association with ANU, so much so 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 political and social critique to an equally rigorous commentary on how out fragile environment suffers from both climate change and mining.
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 has been described by Sasha Grishin as “an apocalyptic intense landscape”, 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.
Her later works included large scale installations, made in collaboration with her son, Alexander Boynes.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2021