BIO
Floating and weightless.
Naked. Beneath water. Floating and weightless. It is one of the closest feelings of pure freedom known to humankind, the sensual touch of water on parts of the body almost always covered with cloth.
Martine Emdur has been capturing this sensation for some time blending a world of gravity-free flotation with the sublime attributes of perfectly rendered naked women. These are far from any sense of orgiastic excess, they are too gentle and sensual for that. They are more a slow-motion celebration of form, the perfectly rendered buttock, the curved breast, the soft skin of the foot.
And of course, it seems perfectly natural, even if it seems you are breaking some kind of taboo. It is the adverse of the puritanical, it is as though as well as shedding our clothes we are shedding Christian guilt, shedding capitalist wares, shedding societal norms returning to the womb.
And of course this is where we all begin, naked in the waters of the womb, floating and unaware of the weight that is about to be encumbered on us once that wave of fluid passes and we are forced into the glaring light and have to wait for that first bath to be enveloped once again.
From there its all down-hill. From there, for most of us, we have to wait for that surreptitious moment, that lake or stream in the secluded bush, or that marvelous sense of naughtiness out in the bay away from the beach crowds.
Not Emdur. She finds models to strip off and join her in the waters. She allows them to simply float or swim, capturing them photographically to be then rendered on canvas. It is inevitable that this process has an element of the voyeuristic, a soft-core dance of promise as the water sways over the flesh.
At times her figures are paired, at others they are single and purely contemplative, their problems left by the pool-side along with their clothes. Freedom incarnate. But we also know that it is a short-lived freedom, these mermaids must eventually return to shore, to the pool side, a return not just to terra firma, but to the weighty realities of day to day life, where the soft feet floating for the moment must return to asphalt and concrete and shoes, where the sensual flesh must once again be clothed.
Water, and more specifically, the sea, have long been the domain of Emdurs work. She has tackled the sea from above and below. She has rendered swimmers of all ilks, from the young to the old, from the naked to the garishly clothed. She has depicted surfers and surf breaks and in one particularly powerful image she has depicted the surfboard wake of a friend, the surfers arrayed in a solemn circle, the sea grey and cold around them, their mourning palpable.
While it is easy to bathe in the pleasures of water it is equally possible to be terrified, an aspect of Emdurs work that might evoke night terrors in those who simply find being in the ocean a cause for heart palpitations. There are times in these works when one gives pause as the darkness in the lower half of the canvas seems to beckon, to reach up towards the swimmer.
While it is not the focus of Emdurs most recent work, the lurking terrors of the under-surface world are also not denied. The murky depths do battle with the translucent blues towards the surface. Her swimmers may gracefully glide, but the threat of below is palpable. Water, like fire, is an unpredictable element, both comforting and dangerous, capable of whip-lash mood swings that can capture the unwary in seconds. One moment we float in ecstatic weightlessness, the next the fragility of the body becomes all too apparent and the depths seem to crave a meal. There are moments in her oevre when the nakedness turns from the sensual to the fragile where everything seems vulnerable, where the work turns from the erotic to the chilly sense of total exposure.
Emdur has depicted the extremes of this part of the world from which, millennia ago, we emerged. The ocean is our own gigantic womb, one we poison with pollutants in ignorance, all too often forgetting its sensuous touch upon naked skin.
But the sea can also be treacherous. Like fire, it is one of the hardest subjects for a painter, but Martine Emdur has immersed herself in this element, capturing the joys, melancholies and fears of that most precious substance: water.
Ashley Crawford 2008
Exhibitions
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 Deep, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne
2007 New Works, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2006 Limelight, Schubert Contemporary, Main Beach
2005 New Works, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2004 Art House Gallery, Melbourne Art Fair, Victoria
2003 New Works, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2002 New Works, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2001 Sapphire, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2000 Descent, Art House Gallery, Sydney
1999 Coasting Art House Gallery, Sydney
1998 Sanctum Art House Gallery, Sydney
1997 Global Gallery, Paddington, Sydney
1997 Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Bondi, Sydney
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2005 Portia Geach, Finalist, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney
2004 Christmas Show, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2003 Archibald Finalist, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney
2003 Ned Kelly Framed, Charity Auction, SH Ervin Gallery National Trust Centre
2002 The Kings School Painting Prize
2002 Flesh, Art House Gallery, Sydney
2001 Archibald, Art Gallery of New South Wales, touring
2001 Waverly Art Prize
2001 Kings School Art Prize
2001 Global 4th Anniversary Exhibition, Global Gallery, Sydney
2000 Melbourne International Art Fair, Art House Gallery
2000 Kings School Art Prize
2000 SCEGGS Redlands Art Prize
2000 Salon de Refuses
2000 Mosman Art Prize
2000 Waverly Art Prize
1999 Kings School Art Prize
1999 Waverly Art Prize
1999 Mosman Art Prize
1999 Tap Gallery, Sydney
1999 Art House Gallery, Sydney
1998 Art House Gallery, Sydney
1998 Art House Gallery, Sydney
1998 Red Global Gallery, Sydney
1998 Landscapes Art House Gallery, Sydney
1998 Flow, Global Gallery, Sydney
1997 Kevin Brennan, Bondi Pavilion, Sydney
AWARDS
2002 Winner, Kings School Art Prize and Peoples Choice Award
2001 Local Subject Prize, Waverly Prize
2000 Skeggs Redlands Peoples Choice Award
2001 Highly Commended, Waverly Prize
2001 Peoples Choice, Kings Prize
2000 Highly Commended, Waverly Prize
1999 Peoples Choice, Waverly Prize
1999 Local Subject Prize, Waverly Prize
1999 Peoples Choice, Kings Prize
1999 2nd Peoples Choice Awards - Tap Gallery