Drawing Country

A powerful exhibition of large charcoal drawings of Australian trees by Deakin’s Professor Brian Martin is being launched on Thursday, 5 November at the William Mora Galleries in Richmond.

The solo exhibition, entitled “Drawing Country,” features ten monochromatic charcoal drawings that each portray different living trees at various stages of their growth cycle.

Depicted in remarkable detail, each drawing is around 2m x 1.5m in size and has a striking impact - drawing viewers into the atmosphere of place and history they represent.

Professor Martin is Deputy Director of Deakin’s Institute for Koorie Education (IKE), which he joined in July 2013. He is an expert in indigenous knowledge and visual practice and has been exhibiting his own artworks for over 25 years.

The youngest of nine children, Professor Martin was born in Sydney of mixed Indigenous Australian ancestry. He took up drawing at the age of 15, teaching himself the rudiments of indigenous and western art before undertaking an Arts Degree at the University of Sydney when he was 18.

For Professor Martin, each of his drawings is connected to a specific Aboriginal location, particularly in NSW and Victoria, with which he has a strong connection, through personal, family or ancestral links.

He explained that the phenomenon of “country” is extremely important to Aboriginal culture, with artworks “bringing into being” the artist’s country, personal experience, values and traditions.

“Aboriginal people distinguish between ‘country’ and landscapes in art,” he said.

“We don’t own land. We belong to country. Land can be manipulated and objectified, but country is a living subject.”

As well as laying claim as an artist to a kinship with “traditional” Australian Aboriginal art, Professor Martin is also inspired by ideas such as those of Australian philosopher and cultural historian Professor Paul Carter.

In homage to Carter, he calls his individual works in “Drawing Country” “methexical countryscapes,” borrowing from Carter’s ideas around the Greek concept of “methexis,” meaning “group sharing,” that can also be found in Celtic and other Indigenous art practices.

“Drawing Country” will be officially opened by Professor Ruth Rentschler OAM, Chair in Arts Management at Deakin, and will include a “welcome to country” by Auntie Diane Kerr, on Thursday 5 November, 6-8 pm.

• “Building Country” will be held from 5-25 November at William Mora Galleries, 60 Tanner St, Richmond.