Guide

FRUIT MARKET POP UP SPACE                              EXHIBITION GUIDE

25 Humber Street, Hull

GHOST WINDOWS

LINDA MARTIN   Instagram @linjamart21    Website linjamart.com

GHOST WINDOWS is the first solo show of Hull based artist Linda Martin.

The exhibition features a selection of paintings drawings and prints from a body of work dating from Autumn 2020.  In this opening window of time, the artist is navigating emotions of loss and isolation as she deconstructs and reconstructs the architectural space of her studio. The audience is invited to inspect her work closely and from a distance to discover their own imagery and connections.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The work originates from my responses to the studio space. I am interested in the deconstructing and reconstructing of architectural spaces. Each work ‘eats itself’ and the next is spawned, whilst misty veils and rainy daubs make the invisible, visible.  The works belie a longstanding fascination with the presence of absence; generating self-reflection and interrogation of space and memory, through photography, printmaking, drawing and dreaming, all of which, seep into these new paintings.

THE EXHIBITS

Exhibit 1. Ghost Window 6.  2022. Oil and Acrylic on Linen 90 x 90cm  All the 90 x 90 canvases except Exhibit 18 were gessoed black. The underpainting of this work appears on the exhibition poster. A restricted colour palette was chosen. Dark motifs recur in the paintings. Soundtrack to the works with in Mars red (made from iron oxide) in them were tracks from Ghost Stations by Marconi Union and works by Steve Reich which enabled the artist to be ‘in flow’.

Exhibit 2. Ghost Window 7. 2022. Oil and Acrylic on Linen 90 x 90cm   The dark motif appears again and is emphasized, whilst and much of the underpainting in white acrylic paint pen is left exposed.

Exhibit 3. Ghost Window 31. 2022 Acrylic on linen, 90 x 109cm 2023. Beneath the black gesso lies a discarded headless portrait in blue. The artist made swift marks using bodily pressure on a white gesso charged tennis ball, repeating with a spiky ball. The edges became important and at the time Martin was looking at works by Tachiste painter Pierre Alechinsky who has a fascination with borders of work. Martin is processing loss in this painting. It spawned the four further works in black and white on the opposite wall, and in particular it resonates with the largest painting opposite it, Exhibit 13

Exhibit 4 Ghost Window 2. 2021 Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90   This painting was spawned by its neighbour to its left, exhibit 5! The artist plays with the motifs, referring to some of Mondrian’s square compositions. Much paint has been laid on, then scraped away.

Exhibit 5 Ghost Window 1 2021 Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90cm. The very first of this restricted palette series. The artist obliterated the image by daubing marks, then scraping fast vertically, which enables forms to appear through the veil.

Exhibit 6 Ghost Window 24, 2022 Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90cm

Exhibit 7 Ghost Window 23 2022 Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90cm

Exhibit 8 Ghost Window 22 2022 Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90cm

A set of 3 black and white rainy daub paintings. Here the artist continues with the same procedure of detailed underpainting, with the reoccurring motifs, but this time painting becomes a fast frenzy of mark making. Following a period of isolation, these paintings are cathartic. Architectural forms appear in Exhibit 8, which came from derived from Exhibit 19. In Exhibits 7 and 8, the sheer act of mark making takes precedent.

Exhibit 9 Ghost Window Minus 2.  2020   Mono(news)print 2020

Exhibit 10 Ghost Window Minus 1. 2020   Mono(news)print 2020

These are part of a trio, first exhibited in Three Works gallery, Scarborough in the 1^st Annual newsprint Exhibition, 2021. They were made using the glass top of a coffee table. They were a distraction in a 3 day challenging window of time.

Exhibit 11 Ghost Window 28. 2022 fineliner on paper mounted on canvas.

Exhibit 12 Ghost Window 29. 2022 fineliner on paper mounted on canvas

Both of these are derived from layered images of acrylic underpaintings of previous paintings. The artist enjoys finding all kinds of imagery in these ‘grounding’ drawings and leaves it to the viewer to find their own! What do you see?

Exhibit 13 Ghost window 36 2023 Acrylic on canvas 178 x 145cm The most recent and largest work here. The artist worked on loose canvas affixed to the wall following a sense of constriction with the 90 x 90cm format of Exhibit 7. It was then later stretched in this gallery. Painted in two sessions, weeks apart at a time of profound loss, it provided a means of joyful connection. The Whirling Ways of Stars that Pass (from film soundtrack, The Theory of Everything) by composer Johann Johannsson influenced this piece.

Exhibit 14 Ghost Window 32. 2023 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 cm   Response to Lacrimosa by Zbigniew Preisner

Exhibit 15 Ghost Window 33. 2023 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 50 cm   Painted in silence…

Exhibit 16 Ghost Window 34. 2023 Acrylic on canvas 39 x 30cm   Response to Arvo Part’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

This trio below were painted just before Exhibit 13 on the same evening exhibit as its 2^nd session, and took the painter to place needed for finishing the larger work, where ‘time became elastic’ .

Exhibit 17 Ghost Window 4. 2021 Oil and Acrylic on canvas

Exhibit 18 Ghost Window 8. 2021 Oil and Acrylic on canvas

Exhibit 19 Ghost Window 5. 2021 Oil and Acrylic on canvas

This trio of works is part of the series on the opposite wall. Exhibit 18 acts as a pause. Painted using her hands, strangely reminded her of her now absent her 6^th fingers, she obliterates the underlying structures. This is the only 90 x 90cm painting not painted on a black canvas!

Where next? The artist looks forward to continuing the Ghost Windows series as the works continue to eat themselves and spawn new pieces.  The main purpose of this show was to discover how the works resonated and connected to each other and to an audience. The very act of hanging the show and writing this guide is a vehicle for this.

Thank you for exploring Ghost Windows!

LIST OF WORKS

1. Ghost Window 6      Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2022
2. Ghost Window 7      Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2022
3. Ghost Window 31    Acrylic on linen. 90 x 109cm 2023
4. Ghost Window 2      Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2021
5. Ghost Window 1      Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90cm 2021
6. Ghost Window 24    Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2023
7. Ghost Window 23    Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2023
8. Ghost Window 22     Acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2022
9. Ghost Window Minus 2 Mono(news)print & canvas 90 x 90 cm           
10. Ghost Window Minus 1 (as 9 above, both 2020)
11. Ghost Window 28 Fineliner on paper & canvas 90 x 90 cm
12. Ghost Window 29 (as 11 above, both 2022)

13      Ghost Window 36    Acrylic on canvas 178 x 145 cm 2023

14      Ghost Window 32    Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 cm 2023

15. Ghost Window 33 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 50 cm 2023
16. Ghost Window 35 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 cm 2023
17. Ghost Window 4 Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2021
18. Ghost Window 8 Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2021
19. Ghost Window 5 Oil and acrylic on canvas 90 x 90 cm 2021

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born London 1960

Linda Martin is a Hull based artist with a fascination with architectural spaces and absence and presence. Her return to art education and the art community at the city’s Feral Art School, has reaffirmed the sheer necessity to paint. 

Now in her 60’s, she reflects on the roots of her interest in architectural space, which begun in her early years. Early childhood experiences included watching her home being built as a baby, crawling with crayons on her father’s large engineering drawings and frequent visits to industrial ruins. She drew and painted in her bedroom up until she left home to complete a B.Ed in Fine Art at Roehampton University. Later a career change from school teaching to tourism took her to Coventry where she became fascinated by the link between the old and new cathedrals.

Arriving in Hull in the late 80s, her tourism career included in the 90s onwards being PR for The Deep Millennium Project (architect Terry Farrell). At the same time she studied for a MA in fine art (University of Lincoln). Working at a major construction project, alongside a multidisciplinary team which included designers, architects and builders, influenced her practice in terms of exploring architectural space. Her final MA piece in 2001 ‘Journey through the Unseen’, was an abstract video in a tunnel installation. It involved dragging a video camera with a Borescope taped on, through a mattress, becoming a vehicle for exploring emotional pain. The result had an underwater aesthetic and also was a circular vignette image. Martin’s work has appeared in group exhibitions in Hull and London including Kingsgate 1984. Notably in 1980 she was invited to organise and contribute to a group student exhibition of life drawing at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, London to coincide with Christopher Hampton’s Total Eclipse, starring Simon Callow.

She has recently exhibited a drawing on Newsprint at Three Works gallery, Scarborough. Her image Silent Tread was included in anthology or work responding to the music of This Mortal Coil, entitled Searching for a Sound by Philip Treble published May 2023.  The artist’s digital images and videos have been used for album covers and on online music platforms for the band Lunar Paths from 2022 onwards.

THANKS TO

Fruitmarket Hull

Feral Art School Hull

HEY Volunteers

Makerspace Hull

TODO Designs

Andrew Quinn Exhibition Installer

Friends of the artist