Drawings
Exhibition dates: Tues 13 to Sat 31 May 2008
View the artworks
In a short introduction for the Mambo website, I once compared Matthew Martin to American film director, Quentin Tarantino. I did this not because of any habit Matthew had for spouting obscure religious texts before plunging a sharp dip pen into the forehead of a belligerent editor but due to the fact that like QT, who jumped from behind the counter of a suburban video store to write and direct the cult classic, Reservoir Dogs, Matthew’s jump into the dress circle of international cartooning followed employment as a surfboard shaper, surveyor’s chainman, and ditch digger.
Matthew Martin was born in Broken Hill in 1952. In 1956 the family moved to Adelaide where Matthew surfed and drew his way through school. Following several mundane and short-lived careers, he eventually enrolled at the South Australian School Of Art.
Matthew moved to Sydney in 1981 and spent the next decade cheering up the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald with his unique style of pictorial humour.
In 1990 Matthew moved again, this time to New York where he lived until an incident involving two planes and a set of iconic towers convinced him to move home. While in NY his illustrations regularly appeared in major newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Time magazine, The Village Voice, New York magazine and Rolling Stone.
