Lucille Martin is a contemporary Australian artist with an established professional career in Photo-media and Multi-disciplinary work that includes education, counselling and policy advocacy. In a career spanning 30 years her practice has steadfastly and successfully connected conceptual substance, production and presentation as strongly aligned trinity in the exploration of themes within solo, group & curatorial exhibitions, awards & residencies in Australia and overseas. Her work is peer awarded with four Australia Council Grants, including the Australia Council International Tokyo Residency 1994-95 and three Department of Culture and Arts grants including The Western Australian Premiers Fellowship in 1996.
Martin’s photographic practice was introduced in her first solo exhibition through the genre of Documentary Observation Photography which informed her strong sense activism to support humanitarian and environmental causes through storytelling.
“Her advancement of materials, methodology, process, and interpretative connotations has ensured successful project outcomes and artwork that engages not only as visual objects but conceptually and historically.” Paola Anselmi, Curator, arts writer & consultant. Western Australia
Methodologically she has explored new platforms of Photo-capture from Polaroid to Photocopy, Hi-8 Video to iPhone-capture layering and challenging the surface of materiality and photographic collage.
From 2018 – 2021, Martin reconnected with Documentary Observation once more, taking on an ambitious task to document specific landscapes in Australia. Underpinned by awarded and grant funded residencies and fuelled by her passion to draw attention to environmental themes and Aboriginal ancestral fire land management practices, Martin walked and documented Indigenous Fire practice and Fire Ravaged land in and around parts of North and South Tasmania, Southern and Northern New South Wales, the Kimberley’s and The Great Southern region of Western Australia. This body of photographic work will be presented as a solo exhibition in Perth, WA late 2021.
What does Hatched mean to you?’
‘Hatched’, PICA, 1993 was the defining event in an extraordinary three years of my early career underpinned by the start of the Masters’ degree at UNSW-College of Fine Arts*. With the support of esteemed supervisors Jackie Redgate, Lynne Roberts Goodwin (Photography) Aus, Bill Seaman(4D) US and theory lecturer Dr. Diane Losche (US), her work took on an international perspective based on her research and focus of a non-euro centric vision to the social and psychological aspects of cultural identity.
The Hatched Exhibition launched Martin’s Photography and 4D video work which in turn advanced curatorial recognition and peer reviewed awards such as, The Australia Council Studio in Japan, a residency at ARTLAB, Canon Inc, in Tokyo and selection in ISEA – The 3rd International Electronic Arts in Sydney. The body of work created during The Canon Artlab residency, Tokyo, was immediately selected for 1996 Perth International Art Festival at PICA and a Fellowship from West Australian Department for the Arts.
Martin shares, “Of equal significance to the Hatched Exhibition Opening, was a co-ordinated symposium providing robust National debate between the visiting artists and speakers. My work was timely in the sense that Electronic Photo-media had found its place in Australia and I had established my primary artistic discipline framed and driven by strong international female voices- Trinh T. Minh-ha, Audre Lorde, Gayatri Spivak alongside seminal writing of founded on representation and concepts as minority, and other, – Edward Said, Cornell West.”
Of course this trajectory does not sit entirely within academic and artistic pedagogical context without acknowledging the strong political positioning of Sydney and Australia at the time. The Labor Party was governing with Paul Keating at the helm, driving sweeping social changes, and transforming the Australian economy, through recognition of the Creative Arts Industry as crucially essential to the constitution of our National identity.
In 1992 Martin joined the National NSW Committee of NAVA-The National Association of Visual Arts, working with a small and enthusiastic team under the stewardship of Professor David Throsby. With pivotal funding from The Australia Council, and an ambitious aim to set a new curriculum for Art Colleges and Universities in Australia, our aim was to advance the understanding and acceptance of ‘what a professional artist was’ for the future of Visual arts and Craft nationally.
“ Principally, artist’s work and their writings constitute primary documentary material for recording and interpreting the art of a given period and I believe the ‘Hatched’ exhibition and supporting Symposiums must continue to provide that platform.” Lucille Martin, 2021 Artist, Facilitator, Educator
*UNSW-COFA is now termed UNSW-School of Art and Design
