Shapiro Annex Gallery Chippendale Galleries Sydney Art Out Live 2

“I tried to make it less grey, it’s been a grey year.”

Matthew Martin’s ‘Inside And Out’ exhibition billed as ‘Drawings from my studio and outside’ closed Chippendale’s Shapiro Annex Gallery 2020 run. A celebrated Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist with work featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times & The Times (London), Matthew took a very different approach for his latest exhibition; alike much else this year centred on reverie.

“I really like drawing from life, it’s a wonderful escape from 30 years of cartooning where you’re working on ideas which are the primary part of it and it makes your brain hurt so to just make pictures is a fabulous escape,” said Matthew.  “Every time I sit down to make a drawing the natural inclination to make a good drawing takes over so you still want to make something nice and well done but it doesn’t matter what it’s about.

“Some of the new work I call foliage because I wanted to do just lovely pictures; its flowers but I call it foliage because it’s a bit of a mixture.”

Shapiro Annex Gallery Chippendale Galleries Sydney Art Out Live 1

Drawing from his surroundings, 13 of the 39 artworks featured explicitly acknowledge one of Coogee’s favourite fixtures as do two of the late, unlisted additions; the inscriptions for which credit “Wylie’s Baths of course.”

“I live in Coogee and I swim at Wylie’s baths and being a compulsive drawer of pictures I always have a sketchbook with me,” said Matthew, having only recently bedecked several Brickfields coffee cups with happy illustrations. “I’ve done maybe a thousand drawings down at Wylie’s; anything from the rocks to the water to the swimmers to the wooden structures, just whatever takes my eye on any given day.

“(It’s gone) surprisingly well,” said Matthew. “It got off to a slow start and I thought this wasn’t going to be a very good year and then people just kept on coming in and buying stuff.”

See here for virtual tour of Shapiro Annex Gallery, Matthew Martin’s ‘Inside And Out,’ more information and where to find the Gallery

Glen Falkenstein

Shapiro Annex Gallery Chippendale Galleries Sydney Art Out Live 6

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