Many of Mandy Martin’s paintings have been concerned with the relationship between technology and nature.  She is both appalled and fascinated by the immense structures that stretch across the landscape. Martin’s paintings are an enquiry on progress, destruction and the effect of human activity on the human environment.  Mandy Martin has stood where artist Ethel Spowers stood in 1933 to depict ‘the works’ at Yallourn.

Steam and smoke suggest energy, power and movement and often appear in Martin’s paintings as empirical evidence; in Martin’s paintings you can always tell which way the wind blows.  Unlike Spowers however who was depicting optimism and a belief in progress, Martin expresses doubt and uncertainty about the future.

Image credit: Mandy Martin, APM Rain, Steam & Speed, 1990, oil on linen, 100 x 244.2 cm, Cbus Collection of Australian Art

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