Page 36 - Studio International - December1996

Some recent works by Kenneth Martin

Andrew Forge

Born Sheffield 1905. First They are on an intimate scale, condensed; they don't
kinetic works 1951.
Associated with group have loose ends and their structure is homogeneous even
activities of abstract, if it is open-ended; they don't proclaim a mood or a
constructed and kinetic art posture; they are neither monumental, nor eclectic, nor
in England and abroad
during the 50's and 60's. primititivistic; their scale is extremely concrete. One
Exhibitions include: Artist v wants to handle the sculptures, to see them from every
Machine, Building Centre, angle. They are whole and completely themselves.
1954. This is Tomorrow,
Whitechapel Art Gallery, Every work proceeds from a relational idea extended in
1956. International Movement movement: this is its process. Usually it is worked out in
Exhibitions, Amsterdam and a number of drawings on graph paper—a beautiful and
Stockholm, 1961. British
Constructivist Art, New virtually unknown aspect of his output which one can
York and touring U.S.A., only hope will one day see the light. These drawings are
1961-2. Painting and rarely sketches of total works, nor could they be. He is
Sculpture of a Decade,
Tate, 1964. British Sculpture not working out a final configuration, a result, but setting
in the sixties, Tate, 1965. in motion a process. A drawing is more likely to look like
Eighth Tokyo Biennale, 1965. a composer's working score than a sculptor's sketch, and
Art and Movement, Tel Aviv,
1965. Nova Tendencija 3, might be as unlikely to offer a direct suggestion of what
Zagreb, 1965. Commissions the final work would be like.
include a Fountain in The series called Oscillation, for example, consists of
Stainless Steel at Brixton
Day College, London, 1961. stacks of brass bars of identical sections and determined
Gold Medal, President length. Their relationship is based on a process for which
of the Council of the schema was a drawn grid, like a graph, representing
Ministers, Italy, 1965.
all the relationships that the bars could possibly take up
in horizontal rotation. A numerical series, representing
the length of each 'phrase' to be built, was permutated
on this grid and the positions marked. Certain parts of
the grid became passive, others active. There are strong
reminiscences here of the practice of certain contempo-
rary composers both in the rigour of the system and its
open-endedness. Certain 'rules' were absolute, but there
was room for pauses, repeats, inversions and for a degree
of indeterminancy. Certain possibilities were limited by
the structure itself: a good join had always to be made.
In his most recent painting, Rotation, signs—a square, a
triangle, and a diamond—are derived from a grid drawn
on the canvas. Each sign is surrounded by zones of fram-
ing lines in certain fixed sequences of colour. As the
zones of each sign grew they encroached on the zone of its
neighbour, like a process of stacking or piling in reverse.
Time becomes visible as a forming element.
To be anywhere with Kenneth Martin—at a window, or
in a Gothic cathedral or Charing Cross station—is to be
aware of one's eye as a kind of probe, an organ of move-
ment and exploration. He is always looking for paths in
space, for assonances, for alternatives. He counts. Among
his favourite paintings are certain Dutch works, the
courtyards of de Hooch and the landscapes of Hob-
bema, where the eye is taken on a measured and in-
ventive journey. The invitation to travel through one's
eye is never absent from his work, and everything that he