Jarrad Martyn (b. 1991, Aberdeen Scotland) is an Australian artist based in Melbourne.

His practice explores humanity’s relationship with the natural environment and how different historical events are framed. Through responding to a wide variety of source imagery, from family albums, to found imagery, and travel snapshots, Martyn is interested in the movement and evolution of images through time. His concentration on the impact of the changes in legacy aims to produce a range of new associations in the present.

Through collapsing the distinctions between figuration and abstraction through painting, drawing and digital collage, Martyn’s works create a state of flux - to visually represent something that is not fixed and constantly changing. His aesthetic language creates an ambiguous sense of place, and his distortion of the imagery is characteristic of the ways in which photography and painting preserve memory in different ways. Through his mix of figuration and abstraction, his work aims to hinder accepted representations, and encourages the viewer to shift between modes of thinking and looking, to deduce links between, and decipher their own conclusions as to what events are unfolding, and the symbolic meanings within.

Martyn received his Master’s in Contemporary Art (Research) through the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne in 2024, receiving the Ofloff Family Foundation Award, and the Arc One Residency Prize for his work.

Martyn’s work is held in a number of public and private collections in Australia and overseas, including the Gippsland Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University, Curtin University, Schmidt Ocean Institute, City of Perth, City of Joondalup, Shire of Mundaring, City of Yarra, and St John of God Hospital Art Collection, among others.

Martyn has been selected for numerous art awards, grants, and residencies, most significantly winning the John Stringer Art Prize (2018), the City of Joondalup Community Invitation Art Award Overall Acquisitive Award (2017), Fifty Squared Art Prize (2021), Mayors Award for the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art (2023) and the People’s Choice Award for the John Leslie Art Prize (2024).

Martyn’s practice also extends into the public sphere, having been commissioned for a number of large-scale council and commercial painted murals. His work can be seen in the Shire of Collie (Western Australia), Rochester (Victoria), City of Fremantle (Western Australia), City of Swan (Western Australia), and the Newman Hotel in the Pilbara (Western Australia), among others.

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
24 May / 29 June 2025

JARRAD MARTYN
Echo

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Stockroom Kyneton, gallery two
04 February / 12 March 2023

JARRAD MARTYN
Polar Front

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