Mandy Martin

Letterbox

1978, gouache on cold pressed board

A gouache illustration of a woman, shown on her knees trimming a patch of lawn with scissors, beside a letterbox of her Queanbeyan house.

This work is part of Mandy Martin’s 1978-1979 ‘Queanbeyan Study Series’. Martin gradually became uneasy about depicting portraits of her neighbours in her work. Although she had made their images with consent and in friendship, as a feminist, she became concerned that they could be interpreted as too overt and voyeuristic. She began to reduce any identifiable characteristics in their features and towards the end of 1979, the figure disappeared from her work entirely, and essentially never returned.

Instead, she sought to find visual metaphor and metonym in the fragmentary details of the places where people live and work. She was intrigued by the rigid grids of picket fences, Venetian blinds and window frames, and reframed these elements in her compositions to subtly express patterns of constraint. Trees swathed tightly in plastic wrapping, the jagged patterns of deep cast shadows, and the contrast of an unruly plant against the fixed geometry of masonry became part of a rich visual vocabulary of a veiled language.

Dimensions

49.5 x 59 cm (image) 54.5 x 75 cm (sheet)

Categories

Visual Art

Credit

Canberra Museum and Gallery, gift of the artist 2021