Alex Martinis Roe
  • Alex-Martinis-Roe-Cut-video-still-2009.jpg

    Alex Martinis Roe, Cut (2009). Video still. Image courtesy of the artist

  • Alex-Martinis-Roe-Bltter-2009.jpg

    Alex Martinis Roe, Blätter (2009). Video still. Image courtesy of the artist

Alex Martinis Roe

20 September - 17 October 2010 in the Square² Gallery

The book features as body metaphor in Cut and Blätter, two recent films by Berlin based artist Alex Martinis Roe. These works continue the artist’s investigations into the body through performance, video and installation. Shot in near monochrome, and exquisitely spare in detail, each presents a simple representation of the body as subject to violent external forces which divide and destabilise.

In Cut we see the spine of the book being split with surgical precision at the hands of the artist. The process is one of deft movement, and is executed cleanly, but the implied brutality of the act is impossible to disregard. Blätter (which translates as both ‘pages’ and ‘leaves’) also shows a book with spine split; here the pages become dislodged from their position in the book and are blown away. The soundtrack, a gathering storm, wind chimes and ambulance, suggest an urban setting, and contribute an atmosphere of drama and foreboding. Of Blätter, Martinis Roe says ‘if the book is a body, then “Blätter” is a body with unstable and changing boundaries: resistant to normative conceptions of it as a unit’. Cut and Blätter raise questions about what happens when the underlying structure of the body or ‘text’ is ruptured, and it no longer makes sense as a discrete whole.

Alex Martinis Roe completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at Monash University and was awarded the Silver Jubilee Scholarship for post-graduate research (2006-9). In 2006-7 she was a resident at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, and in 2007 undertook a summer programme at the Salzburg International Academy for Fine Arts, Austria with VALIE EXPORT. Recent shows include HaVE A LoOk! HaVE A LoOk! FormContent, London, 2010; The Politics of Art, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2010; Opening Lines, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, 2010; Discreet Objects, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2010; Affirmations, Light Projects, Melbourne (solo) 2010; Towards a Positive Politics of Difference, Monash University Faculty Gallery (solo) 2010. In November 2010 she will exhibit a solo project in Berlin at Limbus Europae. Martinis Roe has been published in art magazines such as Art & Australia, 2009, and produced artist pages for Un Magazine issue 3.1, 2009. Martinis Roe currently lives and works in Berlin.

This work is part of Time/lapse, a series of recent video art from Australia, curated by Andrea Bell. Time/Lapse included work by Laresa Kosloff, Alicia Frankovich and Gabriella and Silvana Mangano.

Further Reading

Time lapse: Essay by curator Andrea Bell

ALEX MARTINIS ROE
Blätter  2009
Cut  2009
DVD
Duration:  59 seconds; 18 seconds, both looped
Both courtesy of the artist