The Mirror, a new body of work by nationally recognised Australian artist Jarrad Martyn, opens at the Albany Town Hall this January, inviting audiences to reconsider the layered nature of memory, history and visual culture.
‘The Mirror’ re-examines archival photographs from Albany’s whaling history, transforming them through layered painting, photography, and digital collage. Once records of labour and industry, these images now carry ecological and ethical significance, prompting reflection on how historical material continues to shift in meaning across time, culture, and environmental perspectives.
Martyn combines fragments of historical photography with abstract textures, gestural marks, and references to museum displays, and idealised landscapes, creating works that hover between representation and abstraction. Viewers are invited to slow down, reflect, and reconsider the past through the lens of the present.
‘The Mirror’ highlights the fluidity of cultural memory, exploring how inherited images shape understanding of place, history, and the environment.
The Mirror: 23 Jan – 14 Feb 2026
Albany Town Hall, 217 York Street, Albany WA
Exhibition Opening: Friday 23 Jan 6pm
Artist Talk: Saturday 24 Jan 10am
BIOGRAPHY: Jarrad Martyn (b. Aberdeen, 1991) is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. His practice explores humanity’s relationship with the natural environment, and the framing and evolution of historical events. By responding to a wide range of imagery, from archival photo albums to found and artificial imagery, Martyn is interested in the movement of these images through time – how the legacy of symbols and motifs transform to produce a range of new associations in the present.
Martyn’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Gippsland Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University, Curtin University, City of Perth, City of Joondalup, Shire of Mundaring, City of Yarra, Schmidt Ocean Institute, and St John of God Hospital Art Collection among others. Martyn has been awarded in various national art prizes, most notably winning the John Stringer Art Prize (2018), the City of Joondalup Community Invitation Art Award Overall Acquisitive Award (2017), the Fifty Squared Art Prize (2021), the Mayor’s Award for the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art (2023), and the People’s Choice Award for the John Leslie Art Prize (2024). He has also been a finalist in a wide selection of awards, commissions, and grants, including exhibiting at the Frost Museum of Science as part of Art Basel Miami Beach (2023).
Martyn’s practice also extends into the public sphere, with large-scale commissions for council and commercial murals. His work can be seen in the Shire of Collie (WA), Rochester (VIC), City of Fremantle (WA), City of Swan (WA), and the Newman Hotel in the Pilbara (WA), among others.
For more information click here
