Congratulations to Mandy Martin’s whose powerful and large-scale painting Wanderers in the Desert of the Real: Wallerawang Powerstation has recently been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. This vivid, panoramic landscape incorporates the industrial and natural desert landscape, capturing the intensity of the scorched, fragile landscape teetering on the precipice.
Mandy Martin is a deeply subversive artist, as are all serious, as are all serious romantic painters, which is to say her work is all about individual hope posited against collective despair, beauty against terror, and making you feel something first in the pit of your stomach before you have time to think about it. The results are painting that often make people weak at the knees, which is exactly the correct response when confronted by the sublime. – William L. Fox
Excerpt from Wanderers in the Desert of the Real catalogue essay from exhibition at Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 17 November – 6 December 2009
Image: Mandy Martin Wanderers in the Desert of the Real: Wallerawang Powerstation 2009 ochre, pigment and oil on linen 180 x 410 cm