Mandy Martin's recent landscapes
Over the past decade, Canberra-based artist Mandy Martin has made her mark as a painter of contemporary Australian landscapes. Martin 's paintings during this time focused on the impact of European tampering with nature-a twentieth-century urban artist depicting the "cultural and industrial colonisation of Australia "1 , Dramatic iconography included stark industrial buildings set in a ravaged or barren landscape-a contemporary interpretation and commentary on Burke's treatise on the nature of the sublime and beautiful. Uncompromising and startling, these images became an established component of Martin 's oeuvre.
In her recent exhibition at Michael Milburn Gallery, gone are the industrial sites and the angst-ridden narratives. The psychological insights and the dramatic iconography are still present, but these paintings are more subdued and introspective. Like a giant panorama, these landscapes are presented as a "grand suite" and do not carry the visual and narrative impact of some earlier paintings that could have been read as either a celebration of industry or as a plea for the preservation of the Australian landscape. The works in this exhibition appear as a homage to the explorers of yesteryear-'The heroes of geographical romance"2-and to the grandeur of the Australian landscape. They are a visual commentary on the artist's exploration of self and place, but more particularly on the intrinsic qualities of the pigment used to make these statements. Martin's former social and political concerns are seemingly swamped by the technique and the celebratory use of paint.
As a group, the paintings are overwhelming in the sheer physicality and sensuality of the paint-smeared, knifed, scraped, brushed, and perhaps squeezed straight from the tube-the smell of oil paint permeated the gallery. Across the foreground of the wide