Alex Martinis Roe

Martinis Roe works as an artist in order to practice a politics of difference. This is a positive practice which affirms its genealogy within the history of art practice and then ruptures it toward a future symbolisation of difference. Martinis Roe does this by providing frameworks for events which simultaneously problematise the subjectivity of authorship and produce positive, specific and consciously activated relations between those who enact the art encounter. Martinis Roe does this work in order to contribute to the future of a parasitic, feminine genealogy praying on the legitimacy that the art industry affords it. With a particular interest in the temporal position of authorship as something that works in the past, present and future, Martinis Roe positions her activities as platforms for experience and further action beyond authorship and thus external to the economy of its trade. It is in this way that her work moves beyond the art industry to continue its effect into different economies and different languages.

However paradoxically, this movement away – this refusal of her own authority – is contingent upon the genealogy of her own work and thus if asked what kind of work I make: she makes documents. These documents are objects, images (both moving and still) and texts, which record the history of their specific encounter or production without attempting to transparently communicate the content of that experience/activity. The refusal to transfer this content within the same context is where her practice becomes co-dependent on the artwork’s interlocutors. These documentary objects/texts then work performatively as the framework which re-produces the cadrage (scene of representation/conditions of meaning) for the next encounter.

Alex Martinis Roe completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at Monash University Australia and was awarded the Silver Jubilee Scholarship for post-graduate research (2006-9). In 2007 she undertook a summer program at the Salzburg International Academy for Fine Arts, Austria with VALIE EXPORT. Recent shows include HaVE A LoOk! Have a Look! FormContent, London (2010), The Politics of Art, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art,  Melbourne (2010), Opening Lines, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, (2010), Discreet Objects, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2010), and Affirmations, Light Projects, Melbourne (solo) (2010). Martinis Roe has been published in art magazines such as Art and Australia (2009) and produced artist pages for Un Magazine issue 3.1 (2009). Martinis Roe currently lives and works in Berlin.