^{Image: Polar Front - Voyage (2021) by Jarrad Martyn, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.} 

Shipwrecked explores humanity's relationship with the natural environment through the intersection of family and world histories.

Martyn's inspiration for this body of work was a series of photographs his Father took whilst working at Casey Station in Antarctica during the 1980s. The landscape has significantly changed since the photos were taken with Antarctica experiencing some of the most rapid climate warming on Earth. Once-stable ice shelves are long melted, numbers and habitats of bird and marine species have starkly declined, and the human footprint in the region has increased. In the past, the photographs were personal memories of a far-off landscape, but now seem foreboding and premonitory.

Martyn uses the principles of bricolage (something constructed from a diverse range of things), to bring together academic research and imagery. The works in this exhibition collage together archival photographs with weather forecast patterns to evoke a sense of the otherworldly. With an emphasis on the figure ground relationship, a painting language of dripping, blurring and textural contrast is employed to create an atmosphere of precariousness.

This slippage between contexts and the legibility of figuration encourages the creation of new conversations and symbolic connections.Questions include how painters are meant to depict the landscape amongst the accepted public consciousness of climate change, and the familial significance of memory-making and keeping.

Link to Jarrad Martyn's website