Showing new pottery and work on paper, we asked Martin about his upcoming show…

“My process of building shapes to work upon extends from endless drawings, lists, cutting and pasting. The current new work looks to combine the ‘dumb’ playfulness of these drawings - how they wobble, teeter, slip and seem out of balance and proportion - and then try and build them, what essentially are bad or ugly pots and then look to make them somehow.. elegant.”

There is a rawness in painting on the objects, it is even disagreeable to what the form or sculpture is, evincing a skepticism as to the whole constructed enterprise. with fluent gestures I try to elevate facts from the prosaic to the poetic - ’Where such fluency is achieved we are magically convinced that everyday speech is latently poetic and taught by poets (artists), our ears (minds) open up to the true mysteries of language.’ (1) 

1. Hannah Arendt on the poetry of W.H.Auden. Remembering W.H.Auden, The Critics, New Yorker, January 20, 1975.

Enquiries to hello@thisisspace.co.nz