Featured Artist Christina Markin

Featured Artist Christina Markin explores industrial environments with her fascinating body of work. Find out more by visiting her website.

 

 

I was born in Canada; my heritage is half Cree Indian of the First Nations People. In 1997, I completed my honors degree in Fine Arts through the University of Victoria, and then lived in Europe for six years travelling extensively during that time.

 

 

In 2007 I completed a post grad diploma at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and was also an active committee member of the artist run gallery, 69 Smith Street in Fitzroy.  In 2011, I completed an artist in residence program in New Delhi, India and was a finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Queensland. I exhibit in group shows regularly around Melbourne and was invited to also exhibit in a group show in Brooklyn, New York in 2011.

 

 

I look for my painting to give me the unexpected. I do not aim to reproduce what I’ve seen, but rather to relive the experience of the space. Outwardly my subject is recognisable and tangible, yet I aim to recreate a place that is dictated by emotions and memory rather than reality.

 

 

Spontaneity and serendipity play a crucial role in my art making process, as I do not predetermine what the final work will look like. Being responsive during the process is not only engaging but encourages a dialogue to develop with the materials and techniques, which I find stimulating.

 

 

Primarily I work in acrylics and on several pieces simultaneously to keep a feeling of immediacy in my work. As acrylic paint dries quickly, I can be responsive as I work. Occasionally I will also use oils over top as the rich and deeper colours create a contrast, which deepens the perception of space.

 

 

I am inspired by the philosophical writings of Gaston Bachelard’s book “The Poetics of Space”, in which he explores the spaces of the home, showing us how it shapes our thoughts, perceptions and memories.

 

 

My work explores factories, where I am interested in the intimacy and immensity of industrial landscapes. I feel compelled from the sense of emptiness, and desolation that is evoked from entering an industrial space. There is a mystery within the space and the happenings that once took place here. Along with the starkness and beauty of the disused machinery slowing rusting I felt drawn in, like an explorer in a strange new land.

 

 

Through my work I aim to question the relationship between memory and the present; and how manipulating our environment impacts our collective history. For me, an emotional landscape emerges that penetrates the industrial spaces and I find myself drawn in.

 

Christina Markin invites you to follow her on Facebook.