Martin King’s art is usually regarded as being synonymous with the iconography of Australian birdlife. In his impressive painterly works on paper, birds are the emblematic force through which layers of cultural history and the values we have inherited are explored. The presence of birds as silent witnesses, unbounded and soaring spectators or those that co-exist with human habitation are interpreted through a rich Gothic imaginary in which irony, beauty and the mesmerising sublime are frequently combined.
The idea of an Australian gothic began with colonial settlers, and often their perverse translation of the antipodean world. Some thought the flora and fauna exotic, while others described the vast eucalyptus forests as melancholic, the kangaroo a ’hybrid of incompatible parts’, its biformity consisting of a squirrel’s head and the forequarters of a small deer, while the black swan was a ‘sooty’ trespasser.. While we might discern an echo of an anthropogenic crisis in King’s work, there is equally a richly crafted optimism. The sublime and the beautiful are superbly expressed in the stillness and precarious tranquillity found in many of his drawings, etchings and watercolours, while in his larger works silhouetted avians glide across mellow skies and his energetic mark-making coaxes the sensory towards the surreal. Collaged with graphite, pigment, gold leaf and wax, King draws upon his ledger of bird species, a compendium to which he returns with regular reverence. He also pays homage to artists who have influenced his graphic imagery—Albrect Dürer’s owl and magnificent watercolour of a bird’s wing; Casper David Friedrich’s moody, existential ruins, and William Strutt’s panoramic paintings of fleeing birds and animals.
