Ben Martin
Scotland
A Recent Graduate from Aberdeen’s Gray’s School of Art, Ben became the first recipient of the Glenfiddich Residency Award at the 2015 New Contemporaries Exhibition held in Edinburgh’s royal Scottish Academy.
Working within a variety of contexts from the home, human experience, cathartic work and abstraction. Martin has developed a reduced aesthetic the outcomes of which are generally larger scale installation. He is currently investigating, playing and concentrating on simple forms and shape, whilst reacting to raw materials. In trying to achieve a minimal finish to work, he seeks clean lines, flat colours and uses materials as they come and generally in their raw state.
'My current work, using industrial fixings and rope I consider to be drawing within a three dimensional space. Anchoring rope through fixed eyelets in different locations on surrounding walls, floors and ceilings creating a continuous traffic of lines pulled taut by a heavy, chunky steel weight on either end to create an immersive, striking and balanced piece that is visually accessible and instantly understandable. Working under a series of strict ideas to keep the work from being cluttered; Function, Line, Space, Object, Weight, Tension are my parameters and as the work has progressed Balance has become and integral part of the work. These rules have helped me make decisions that otherwise would be quite difficult to make, but by putting them in place if something doesn't directly attach itself it’s removed from the idea. The work is fleeting and changes within new environments, no piece is ever the same and every new space has its own permissions and challenges.'