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campusreview.com.au
A case for fine arts
Artist Alex Martinis
Roe talks about
why she chose to
return to Australia
and her vision for
ANU’s sculpture
program.
Alex Martinis Roe
interviewed by
Loren Smith
T
hink of a famous sculpture. Are you picturing
Michelangelo’s David or Rodin’s The Thinker ?
Or perhaps you’re more of a modernist, and
you’re imagining Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog, or Maman
by Louise Bourgeois. For art students, however, Alex
Martinis Roe’s To Become Two project, a multimedia
installation that invokes feminist theory, might come
to mind.
Having returned to Australia after a lengthy stint in
Europe, the prize-winning native Melburnian will soon
begin her new role as head of sculpture at ANU.
Campus Review asked Martinis Roe about her work
and why she chose to return home – far away from
modern art centres. She also shared her vision for art
at ANU, and ardently advocated the value of a fine arts
degree in a STEM-obsessed world.
CR: Why did you decide to pursue this career?
AMR: I think I’ve been a feminist as long as I’ve been
an artist. It’s a bit of a ‘chicken and egg’ thing for me,
where my politics motivates my work and vice versa.
I’m interested in the arts because I think it’s a sector
where you can contribute to shaping our cultural
values, and address macro questions like, ‘How do the
16
sexes relate to one another?’ and ‘What is the current
state of race relations?’
It’s politics that’s not necessarily tied to day-to-
day events, news media and so on. Instead, it has a
great long-term impact on the way that audiences
see themselves, see their community, and on
shared values.
Being an artist is a way of having a voice that
reaches a diverse range of people and encourages
them to think for themselves. You can say things in a
way that hasn’t been said before.
How do you decide on the medium in which to convey
these messages?
I wouldn’t say that political art is confined to sending
‘messages’, it’s often much more about generating
experiences. I think about the kind of effect I want
to generate, then I will choose media that are most
appropriate to that. By appropriate I don’t mean
conventional, I mean effective, engaging – media that
engender a dialogue with my agenda.
To give an example, in my last few works I’ve used
the genre of documentary. I’ll take something like
a voiceover but then [manipulate] the way that I do