Artwork: Kirsty Martinsen (photographer: Alex Makeyev)
June 15 – July 29, 2020
Opening event: Sunday, July 19, 3-4pm
Where: The Mill Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Cost: Free
Please join us in The Exhibition Space for Our Lady: en feu, a solo exhibition by Kirsty Martinsen.
***The Mill’s exhibition space will be open to the public from June 15, please observe social distancing and make sure to practice good hygiene. ***
Our Lady: en feu (Notre Dame: on fire) is a significant new body of work by painter and colourist Kirsty Martinsen. Inspired by the images of Notre Dame Cathedral ablaze in 2019, the work explores powerful moments within recent history: the #metoo movement, recent political conflict, human-induced climate change, the Australian bushfires, and most recently COVID-19. Kirsty uses her medium to comment on our individual and cultural responsibility to the world we live in. The centrepiece, and namesake of the exhibition is a life sized portrait of a woman in crucifix position. Kirsty draws our attention to humanity and fragility while simultaneously recognising the role that humans have played within these disasters.
Kirsty’s use of colour and gesture is emotive, highlighting the urgency that she feels to draw attention to these profoundly affective events. Within each work she captures fleeting moments, a whip of flame enveloping the spire of the cathedral sits alongside a glowing Sturt Dessert Pea, pointing toward the sacred, which can be found in many forms. Through this series of works, Kirsty questions ‘what we as humans respect and value and the state of the anthropogenic world we live in’.
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I’ve been a painter for 20 years and consider myself a colourist. I’m interested in the issues of climate change and human relationships. ‘Our Lady: en feu’ is a series of recent drawings that began when I saw the colourful flames and smoke of the burning Notre Dame cathedral. I immediately connected them to the naked crucified woman I was working on. The naked figure was for me a burning spire. Witnessing the spire and cathedral burning, a Parisian bystander said it was “significant beyond its religious meaning”. I was left pondering how the world would be today if Jesus was a woman.
Our Lady appears with pastel drawings of the Notre Dame fires, all individually framed by Tom Borgas, and others of the Bushfires, Australian Native Flowers series, and Chernobyl and Gaza as examples of a human population hellbent on destruction. The scale of these disasters are totally diminished by the enormity of what is happening to the world currently. The burning of an 800 year old church is almost trivial in the face of a worldwide pandemic that has irrevocably altered everything. This body of work is an invaluable memento of life as we know it that’s gone forever. It questions what humans actually respect and value, and the state of the anthropogenic world we live in.
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Kirsty Martinsen has had a studio at The Mill since 2014. Her practice is predominantly drawing and painting, and recently as a Writer/Director of the short documentary, Limited Surrender, with SBS and SA Film Corporation. She has a BA Visual Art from SA School of Art (UniSA) and Dip. Painting from New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, has exhibited in USA, Australia and Amsterdam, and is the recipient of awards from Richard Llewellyn Arts and Disability Trust, Arts SA, AGNSW and NY Studio School. Her short film, Breathe, won the Mercedes Matter/Ambassador Middendorf Award at X Marks The Spot: Women of The NY Studio School, the 2018 Alumni show. She teaches drawing and enjoys watching clouds.
View short film documentary about Kirsty’s practice via SBS On Demand: Limited Surrender
