Martin Edmond

Martin Edmond was born in Ohakune, New Zealand and has lived in Sydney since 1981. He is the author of a number of works of non-fiction including, Dark Night : Walking with McCahon (2011). His dual biography Battarbee & Namatjira was published in October 2014.

Works By Martin Edmond

Fragments of thedivine
In a review of John Kean’s study of the Papunya Tula art movement, Martin Edmond examines the intricate negotiations between aesthetic intention and ritual restriction that made the artists’ work possible.
24 Sept. 2023
The Direction of Indirection
The direction of indirection, or the discipline of indiscipline (to quote Frank Moorhouse) gives her writing a flow that is beguiling as well as relaxing. It suspends questions of interpretation and replaces them instead with interactions: the mea...
14 Nov. 2021
Grace In All Simplicity
One of the pleasures of this book is that it introduces you to artists whose work you may not know very much about; another is to read Daniel Thomas on artists whose work you do know and love.
16 June. 2021
‘Differant Curioes’:Trans-Tasman art exchanges 1770-1970
Incoherence, along with a lack of methodological rigour, is particularly apparent in most writing (not that there is much of it) about how practitioners in the visual arts in Australia and New Zealand have interacted with each other since James Co...
16 May. 2021
Endless Yet Never
Colin McCahon ceased painting in 1982. He locked his studio door and, as became apparent after his death in 1987, left his final painting, perhaps unfinished, face down on the floor. Its text, from Ecclesiastes, begins: I considered all the acts o...
3 Sept. 2020
The Story Place
‘One essential insight is that the art always means something different to those who made it from what it means to those who buy it; and is understood differently again by those who curate, exhibit, collect, and write about it. Perhaps this is the...
2 Aug. 2019
A Grand Completeness: Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things
Fink is as scrupulous, in her way, as her subject was. By which I mean she is able, most of the time, to avoid comment. She doesn’t editorialise. The significance of events in Oliver’s life is allowed to emerge from contemporary testimony, perhaps...
12 Mar. 2018
The Shimmer of Light: Rattling Spears by Ian W. McLean
Nothing is simple in this philosophical arena, where rattling spears and tjurunga contend with sextants and theodolites; cans of spray paint with the sepia tones of old colonial photographs. The question is how to make a future. If the Dreaming wa...
19 July. 2017
Unhatched Eggs: Sidney Nolan: A Life by Nancy Underhill
There have been many attempts to come to terms in print with the Nolan phenomenon, but only one full length biography ... Now we have a second biography by art historian and curator Nancy Underhill.
21 July. 2015
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Bill: The Life of William Dobell
Dobell remains an enigma. Bevan says that nobody knew who he was, not even Dobell himself, but I doubt this. I think he knew himself exactly and chose not to communicate that knowledge to others, except parsimoniously in the paintings, and sometim...
1 May. 2015
Ghosts of me: A Bone of Fact by David Walsh
A Bone of Fact is really memoir as a form of self-portraiture and, David Walsh being who he is, not much is held back. He is garrulous, sardonic, impudent, without shame and without inhibitions; but he also has a vein of kindness to his person tha...
27 Feb. 2015
Declivities & eminences: Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen
If, as Jensen suggests, Cullen was in his work a sort of shaman of suburbia, a lightning rod for its deficits and its hidden pain, this only serves to sharpen his loneliness. For shamanism was and is a communal profession, and Cullen was a deeply
30 Sept. 2014
Stranger than we can imagine: Australian Art: A History by Sasha Grishin
Revisionist, indeed polemical, art histories are possible, although they tend to revise the art and its sequences – its ‘place’ in history – not the history itself. Sasha Grishin’s version, Australian Art: A History, is neither polemical nor revis...
29 July. 2014

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Martin Edmond

Works By Martin Edmond

Fragments of thedivine

The Direction of Indirection

Grace In All Simplicity

‘Differant Curioes’:Trans-Tasman art exchanges 1770-1970

Endless Yet Never

The Story Place

A Grand Completeness: Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things

The Shimmer of Light: Rattling Spears by Ian W. McLean

Unhatched Eggs: Sidney Nolan: A Life by Nancy Underhill

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Bill: The Life of William Dobell

Ghosts of me: A Bone of Fact by David Walsh

Declivities & eminences: Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

Stranger than we can imagine: Australian Art: A History by Sasha Grishin

Works Featuring Martin Edmond

In the House of Stories

Crossed Tracks: Battarbee and Namatjira by Martin Edmond