JO MARTIN

Jo Martin is an interdisciplinary artist from Yorkshire, currently based between London and Kent. Her work explores the theme of support, both structural and bodily, through a practice grounded in environmental memory, labour and care. Engaging with the often unseen or undervalued gestures of domestic, maternal and maintenance work, she brings attention to their political significance and material presence. Through textiles, painting, assemblage and writing, Martin challenges hierarchies of value and visibility. She repositions repetitive, sustaining actions as forms of resistance, confronting systems that privilege speed, extraction and productivity. Her work foregrounds the politics of care and maintenance, asking what is held, who does the holding, and how these everyday labours can be reimagined within contemporary art spaces.

Selected exhibitions:

Upcoming:

Materiality, PV: 26th September, The Handbag Factory, London, Group Show

2025

Layer Bond Build - Itch Stitch Stain, Residency, VSSL Studio, Deptford, London

Group Show, Artists Supporting Palestine, Studio 1.1, London

2024

Tribute, Uncovered Collective, Safehouse, London
Artificial Sun, Under The Roof, Arts Event, Candid Arts Gallery
RA Summer Show, London
Murmuration, Group Show, ADL Productions and J/ MGallery, London
CANCAN, group show, ASC gallery Vauxhall
Blood Sweat and Fears, group show, Proposition Gallery, Chalk Farm

2023

Art Show, the Tabernacle, group show, Portobello,
Fell down a well, group show, ESOP Studios

2022

Stars Under My Armpits, group show The ESOP Wood Green London
Mythical Political, The Fire Station Creative, Dunfermline, Scotland

2021

Art Matters, The ESOP, The Art Pavilion, Mile End, London
SPLINT! group show, David Mach RA studio, Havelock Walk, Forest Hill, London

“Painting has endless possibilities but sometimes it is necessary to restrict oneself in order to achieve one’s vision, as is the case with Jo Martin, whose ambitious assemblages are created out of somewhat forlorn, but nevertheless evocative materials. She has restricted her palette to black and white, ochres and the natural colours of sacking and other found materials. From these humble means she constructs vast assemblages which blur the boundaries of sculpture and painting, drawing and installation.”

— Hughie O’Donoghue RA

“Abstraction in chaos, being pulled back down to earth, aspirations to fly are freighted with burdens, like a crushed paper aeroplane sinking into a puddle. Jo Martins beautifully formal constructions are not so much a rag and bone shop of the soul as constructivism reinvented by a cowboy builder.”

— Dan Coombs