Gifted Australian artist Ian Munday opens a new exhibition on 2 July celebrating the music of John Martyn.
“Working through Solid Air is a homage to the legacy of British musician John Martyn’s music. After first hearing his 1973 album Solid Air at eighteen his songs have provided a soundscape to the creation of many of Munday’s studio-based artworks.
Martyn’s songs tackle the classical themes of love and loss but deal with them in an autobiographical way that is not only unflinchingly honest, but also poignant and universally affecting.
The exhibition directly responds to specific song titles; the works are not explicitly referential but instead take a similar form to a “riff” in musical improvisation. Each work capturing the mood of the song in question and alluding to the lyric content, albeit obliquely.
The title song from the eponymous album, Solid Air, was written for Martyn’s close friend Nick Drake (who would die eighteen months after it’s release), to quote John “It was done for a friend of mine, and it was done right with very clear motives, and I’m very pleased with it, for varying reasons. It has got a very simple message, but you’ll have to work that one out for yourself” This exhibition has been created with the same intentions…”
Professor Ralp Crane of the University of Tasmania opened the exhibition at a special event on 1 July saying, “It’s hard to believe that just 10 days short of 11 years ago I opened ‘Solid Air (remembering John Martyn)’, the first of Ian’s exhibitions to draw inspiration from the music of the legendary John Martyn. Several of the works in that sell-out exhibition have since been reproduced on the sleeves of remastered CDs and deluxe editions of Martyn’s works, and two LP-sized gatefolds from The Island Years have been re-worked and can be seen on the walls here. This second exhibition may have had a lengthy gestation period, but I think you’ll all agree that the wait has been worthwhile.
I grew up in the north of England, Ian grew up in the north of Tasmania, but when we first met back in the late 1980s John Martyn provided immediate common ground. We agree that it’s not always easy to grasp the meaning of his lyrics, but we are both frequently brought up short by the sheer beauty of metaphors such as ‘You curl around me like a fern in the spring’, and, of course, by the genius of his extraordinary guitar technique.
Similarly, for me, Ian’s artistic responses to the particular John Martyn songs that lend their titles to these works are like a well kept secret; they are invariably much deeper, more intimate, and altogether more complex than any literal response could be.
Take the work ‘Amsterdam’, for example. The uneasy funeral narrative of John Martyn’s song—from his 1981 album Glorious Fool—has inspired a shadow-box family of figures that may reflect some of the characters that populate the song, but for me there are also intertextual references to Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. In this artwork we can see, I think, the way Ian’s art is shaped by both his deeply considered, willed engagement with John Martyn’s songs, and the possibly unwilled influences that none of us can ever escape. As the eponymous hero of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories reasons, ‘Everything comes from somewhere’—and it’s the combinations that emanate from Ian’s mind that make his work so exciting and original.
Almost all the works in this exhibition are on a much larger scale than those of the ‘Solid Air (remembering John Martyn)’ exhibition of a decade ago. They are also, artistically, far more ambitious, and altogether broader in their range.
Like John Martyn, Ian is inspirational and progressive in his approach to his work, always exploring, always experimenting, always pushing the boundaries of his own creativity.”
Further information on the artist and some of his previous work from the Solid Air (Remembering John Martyn) exhibition in 2010 is available here. Ian’s work has featured extensively on a number of John’s releases.
Ian’s latest work can be viewed at Moonah Arts Centre, 27 Albert Road, Moonah, Tasmania, Australia, TAS 7009 further details here and to plan your visit here.
The Tasmanian Mercury published a short article on the exhibition here.
