Page 2266 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 4 August 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
music venue, such as a student bar in the CIT, as an employment opportunity for hospitality students, a performance space for local artists and to increase activity and boost the night-time economy in Woden.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Arts—Mandy Martin
Ministerial statement
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra—Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Business and Better Regulation, Minister for Human Rights and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.04): I would like to take the opportunity this morning to recognise Mandy Martin—a highly regarded artist, a generous teacher and a passionate environmentalist.
Mandy Martin was born in 1952 in South Australia—her mother an accomplished water colourist and her father a professor of botany. Mandy’s work boldly and cleverly engaged with social and political commentary from the outset. In 1975, the same year that she graduated from the South Australian School of Art, she created feminist anti-Vietnam War posters. Some of these posters were then acquired for the Australian War Memorial collection, launching her art career in spectacular fashion. Since becoming a member of the progressive art movement in South Australia in the mid-1970s, social justice and the environment informed her practice for her entire career.
Sadly, on Saturday 10 July, after a long battle with cancer, Mandy passed away. Mandy’s early works were primarily on paper, including screen-printed posters. This choice of medium was key to the works being mass produced and thereby having more power to promote change. Her early posters critiqued US imperialism, corruption in big business and the subsequent exploitation of workers. Her work also advocated for women’s fight for equality.
Mandy moved to Canberra in 1978, where she married Robert Boynes, also an artist. Together they had two children, Laura and Alexander, who are both accomplished artists in their own right. Her first of over 100 solo exhibitions was at the Solander Gallery in Canberra in 1980. By this time, Mandy had begun making thick impasto brushwork paintings about the impact that humans have on regional, remote and industrial landscapes—both positive and negative. Remarkably, the expert way in which she conveyed her message in her work never overwhelmed its aesthetic value.
A work Mandy is particularly well known for, and which is familiar to many of us, is the monumental triptych painting Red Ochre Cove, commissioned in 1987 for Australian Parliament House, which hangs in the main committee room of the Senate. This 12 metre by three metre major work was made in response to Tom Roberts’ painting of the opening of federal parliament in Melbourne in 1901, which was then hung in the High Court. Red Ochre Cove had an influential effect on Mandy’s career, and continues to impact and influence people who have experienced its beauty and power. I have personally spent a considerable amount of time in the main committee
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video