British Council British Council Visual Arts

Craig Martin’s work is concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of art, about representation, authorship and the role of the viewer. He explores these themes primarily through commonplace objects, both real and as images. In his best known work influenced by Marcel Duchamp; An Oak Tree, 1973 (Tate Collection www.tate.org.uk), he claimed to have changed a glass of water on a glass shelf into an oak tree. His series of large wall drawings, whilst depicting real objects in linear form are abstracted modes of language, more concerned with how we contextualize objects and the narratives they form than the design of the item itself.

Likewise, his ‘box progression’ series takes the language of minimal sculptural form as the starting point for an exploration into self referential autonomous objects. The work exists as both sculptural objects rendered in Formica, and graphite drawings on graph paper, both series questioning our expectations of what art could be, and the meanings inherent in the domestic object and imagery drawn from post-industrialized society.