Artist of the Month, January 2025 - Gavin Martin

Originally from County Down, Gavin Martin is visual artist currently living and working in Belfast. After spending years as a salesman in Bristol, first picking up pen and paper, and later embracing photography. Gavin has also worked as a copywriter in the ad industry, studying in Falmouth for his MA in Creative Advertising, before studying at Ulster University for his MFA in Photography.

Playgrounds is part of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Art Collection. The image is part of a wider series that takes influence from the aesthetic perfectionism of advertising imagery. This work portrays the landscape through the lens of repressed/historic trauma, where any environment, however uninhabitable, can be transformed into a playground.

Each image in the wider series is constructed by panoramic stitching of high-resolution images, numbering between 10-20 per piece. The aperture of each shot within the bigger picture is very open, creating multiple points of focus and depth of field. As a result, the overall image feels other worldly, a confused version of reality, to appear perfect whilst also dealing with internal struggles.