Raewyn Martyn & Jess Charlton: Paint Over, Use Again

For the Open Window on Queen Street, Martyn has created a new work developed from experimentation with industrial fluorescent pigments and plant-based polymers, drawing on her ongoing research into biopolymer materials as alternatives for petrochemical paint products. 

In other recent work, Martyn has used a range of mineral and plant-based pigments and polymers. Reaching back through geological time and her own family histories, Martyn’s work examines how the cycles and systems of the human and natural worlds interwine and diffract. The plasticity of complex relationships between people, human–made materials and the environment is described by the stages of transformation and animation which the painting will undergo as the exhibition progresses.

Drawing and forging from images and texts by Martyn’s grandmother – who was also a painter – Martyn and Jess Charlton have made a film work which is projected onto the painted installation. Pushing into the four-dimensional space between painting and moving image, and engaging the historical relationship between cellulose and celluloid, the film gives presence to the intimate connections between human and material processes.