BIO

Angelina Martinez is an award winning graphic designer with over 10 years experience in all aspects of design for print, with specialist skills in publication design.

Previously Angelina was engaged as a graphic designer at the Queensland Art Gallery for over 7 years. This experience, combined with her BA in Fine Art from QCA, has provided her with a unique understanding of communication design for museums and the arts and cultural sector.

Angelina has furthered her professional experience in the corporate sector through working for two of the best design studios in Brisbane.

Recently taking the step to self-employment, Angelina is dedicated to providing her clients with creative, considered, brilliantly executed design outcomes that communicate effectively to its audience and straight-forward, concise, timely project management and delivery.

Angelina is based in Brisbane, Australia.

PA: 

Angelina Hi and thanks, why does a public archive mapping artist testimonies and artist histories about the ephemeral nature of the vibrant Queensland 1980-1990 artist-run scene matter to you?

AM:

I too am very interested in this pubic archive project as I believe it’s important these untold stories are put on the public record. I was directly involved with several QLD artist-runs during this era including as an practicing artist maintaining a studio and contributing as a committee member of That Contemporary Artspace, rear 20 Charlotte St, 1986-88.

I also exhibited my work in the gallery space and was involved in day to day activities and collaborated with the other artists. I was also involved in Bureau Shop 4, City Plaza, Adelaide St, in 1989 and exhibited my work there and I participated in the 1988 Axis Art Project Axis File which was exhibited in New York. As a Queensland based artist at the time I was working in various media including painting, installation, drawing and sculpture and was focused on various subjects in my professional practice including exploring the contemporary ideas of feminism and female sexuality.

I also felt that women were completely under-represented and mis-represented in the art world during the 1980s. From my perspective this plethora of artist-runs at this time provided many artists like me with a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of the future, a sense of hope and opportunity. Support and resources for young artists to develop and contribute to the cultural fabric of the city were non-existent. Many graduates from tertiary institutions felt, like myself, that we were on our own, with very little prospect of realising any sort of professional career let alone a career in visual art practice.

ARI’s or artist-run spaces as we called them also provided us with a place to exhibit, to network and to meet other contemporary artists. This was invaluable at the time as there were no venues, institutions or galleries that would even consider exhibiting my work or promoting my art practice, especially those of a young female artist like myself.

It is disconcerting that documentation and ephemera from this era has not been collected and published. This archive of material and resources and those of others like myself, deserves to have a place in the social and art history of the city. It is important to document this history of ARI’s in Brisbane because of the unique political, economic and social circumstances at the time, and how this generated such enormous activity by cultural workers that was often critical, challenging and provocative.

REMIX is designed as an online project and what is terrific about this is that it will make these interviews and archives available to a wider audience online, from Queensland and elsewhere, and for much longer period than any exhibition can even attempt to provide. This is important to me.

Today I work as a freelance graphic designer specifically providing design services for clients in the Arts and Museum sector. I’ve also worked at the Queensland Art Gallery as a designer for over seven years. I continue to be involved with local art practitioners, freelance curators and art administrators through my work providing specialised graphic design solutions and services.

Looking back now at my involvement with artist-run spaces like That Contemporary Artspace and Bureau with some small measure of reflection – has provided me with an invaluable creative experience that continues to serve me well in my professional work and in my everyday life. It was an amazing and vibrant time.

PA: 

1970s- 1980’s Queensland/Brisbane Social History: what sort of world was this Queensland for you Angelina?

AM:

In the late 70’s, as a young teen, I used to travel into the city after school most days, acquainting myself with the run down dusty arcades trawling through the second-hand clothes and record shops. Going into the city became quite a ritual, something that I did almost daily until I was in my late twenties. At about age 15, I started going to gigs at the Qld Uni refect, Souths Leagues club (unaware I was too young to be there) and Festival Hall. At night I intercepted AM radio shows from Sydney that played new local bands and listened to ZZZ once I had an FM radio.

I had only just turned 17 when I started study at QCA in 1984. My life around this time was full of a lot of art-making and discussion, share houses, parties, seeing bands, going to clubs, seeing independent films. Life was very eventful and exciting and the art and music underground were full of wonderful, inspiring, creative people. It really was a life-defining time for me.

I remember turning up to class at 9 in the morning straight from a night in the valley, maybe dancing at the Terminus and then The Beat. There were cinemas at Metro Arts Community Centre in Edward St, or some of the old suburban cinemas that often played cult films like Reefer Madness, Glen or Glenda, John Waters and Andy Warhol early films. I think there was a lot of structuralist film theory involved in classes with Waddick Doyle, at QCA which really piqued my interest in film.

Before finishing at QCA in October ‘86 I applied for a studio space at That, I think through Jane (Richens) and moved my studio from QCA to Charlotte St.

I had my 21st birthday party at That a few days after we all vacated the building for its pending demolition in Feb 1988. I took up another space with an artist’s collective at 140 Mary Street (’88), and then 2 Art studios on the 3rd floor, Elizabeth St (‘88-‘89), and also in Metro Arts (‘90) for a bit. I also went back to QCA in ’88 to do a graduate program which I have little memory of.

By the end of the 80’s I became more involved with the music/club scene with John Griffin. John has always been able to intuitively predict what the larger underground music scene in Brisbane would be interested in and with his incredible knowledge of music, could craft an intense playlist of music you would only ever hear at his club nights.

Around ’88 John’s club, Morticias moved to the Hacienda Hotel and he had started doing a lot more promoting of local and international bands. I started creating cut and paste artwork, photocopied and hand trimmed flyers and posters for John’s 70’s disco satire nightclub, Flares. We had many mutual friends and John collaborated on a number of events with people he knew in the art scene.

Most memorable was a Flares at the IMA, a house party in a derelict warehouse with the Photographers Gallery, and a dance party at Isn’t (or maybe it was Brutal,) with David Stafford.

A vibrant, exciting, cultural life really only existed through the efforts of individuals in the alternative/underground community of Brisbane during those years.

PA: 

The Bjelke-Petersen Regime, “The Police State” Qld’s unique 1980’s political backdrop how did it directly or indirectly impact upon you, or not?

AM:

On a personal level, my interactions with the police were pretty trivial. I can remember a few times in the early 80’s the police, questioned myself or my friends, when we were out or just walking down a city street. There was also a drug squad raid at a friend’s share house that yielded for testing my empty tin of lemon travel drops with residual icing sugar…

Queensland was in a complete mess politically and socially and by the mid 80’s, it was unraveling fast. I think my concerns personally, were more around the realities of life as a young woman in this very patriarchal society and trying to express what I felt about this.

PA: 

And the type of art work you were making during the 1980’s, media used, subjects and themes?

AM:

The focus of my work was questioning feminine stereotypes and the social taboos of sexuality. I was influenced by my humanities studies, with Graham Coulter-Smith and Waddick Doyle, in particular semiotics, feminism and the emerging theories of post-modernism. I love the act of painting on canvas with oil, but as my financial resources became more limited, I used whatever I could find – old house paint, charcoal, Masonite boards etc. I even used coffee cups from That for some sculptural pieces.

PA: 

Tell me a bit about the artist collaborations you directly participated in?

AM:

When I was at That space, it seemed like we were all collaborating in various ways on projects that popped up. I spent a lot of time that year working towards the show that I had with you, and Martyn Sommer – Sex/Object. There was a lot of collaboration in the sense as an ‘organiser’ also, such as creating cut and paste flyers and posters for exhibitions and events.

PA: 

Some detail about your family’s own immigration story?

AM:

My maternal lineage dates to at least 1853 in Australia and is typically British. One of my great great grandfathers though, was Chinese travelling here from Canton in the 1880’s, and worked as a cook in a hotel in Toowoomba. One of the English maids at the hotel became seriously ill, and he nursed her back to health. They eventually married.

My paternal great grandparents have a fascinating immigration story, first migrating from Spain to a Welsh community in Patagonia. The Australian Government wanted to populate the North, so offered members of the Welsh Community the opportunity to migrate to Australia. Inducements of housing, land and employment were also offered. They arrived in Darwin, July 1915, and worked in difficult circumstances building the Pine Creek railway. No houses or land were ever offered. After the railway was completed no further employment was available in Darwin, so they moved to Innisfail to cut sugar cane. This particular Commonwealth Government immigration scheme is well documented.

These familial stories have taken on more significance to me more recently. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been not speaking English or having an inter-racial marriage when the ‘white Australia’ policy was in full swing. My mother remembers her great aunt, who lived upstairs from her second-hand shop at Clarence Corner, hiding the wedding photo of her parents so visitors couldn’t see her father was Chinese.

PA: 

Are there other members in your family who are artists or designers?

AM:

No. I often wonder where my interest in art comes from. I have a small oil painting of two cats my father painted when he was about 14. I remember being fascinated with it as a child.

PA: 

Is there one particularly vivid memory or event from your childhood when you knew you wanted to become a professional artist, designer or media producer?

AM:

I remember at kindergarten, spending hours by myself painting with a can of water and brush inside a large concrete pipe. I had to keep repainting the lines as they evaporated. Before I even started primary school I had decided I would become an artist.

PA: 

Tell me about your schooling and early Art classes/education in both primary and secondary schools and about what significant impact it made on you?

AM:

I had a strict catholic education through 12 years of school in Brisbane. I don’t recall any specific art education in primary school…it was more craft orientated. In high school I was an eager student and spent a lot of time on my art assignments. One of the nuns had a keen interest in photography and set up a small darkroom, which she allowed me to use even on the weekends. I ended up becoming a sort of school photographer taking photos at events. I did a lot of experimentation in the darkroom and loved the immediacy of image-making it provided.

PA: 

And your direct experience of Higher Education at QCA,what happened and how did this make you feel?

AM:

I was accepted on my photography portfolio but secretly always planned to major in painting. There were many discussions about the ‘death of painting’ amongst my photography lecturers trying to convince me to switch to photography. There was a lot of competition among the various departments which made it difficult to merge disciplines within your work. I devoted a lot of time to art theory – particularly to the classes I took with Graham Coulter-Smith and Waddick Doyle. It was fortunate timing in hindsight, to be at QCA when it began to transition from a TAFE to a university when the shift away from technical to an academic focus was well underway. Those theory classes had the most impact on my thinking and creative approach to my work.

PA: 

Tell me about your own experiences of sense of place and your sense of belonging in Brisbane at this time?

AM:

I really didn’t want to have anything to do with mainstream culture – the complacency, the conservatism, the sexism, the racism…was so abhorrent to me. I felt a great sense of comradery at QCA and That. It was also why I was drawn to the underground music scene.

PA: 

Where did you hang out? Where did you eat? What did you eat? Where did you dance? Sounds, smells, tastes?

AM:

Hang outs: White Chairs, big old run-down Queenslander share houses all over Brisbane, the city streets and Elizabeth Arcade, and Le Scoops and the Pancake Manor in the early hours on the morning because nothing else was open! Also a lot of exhibition openings.

Eat: Banana sandwiches from The Source were $1.20. Lots of meals at the Hare Krisnas in the small front room they had upstairs in Elizabeth Arcade. Tortilla sometimes. Shingle Inn cheese on toast and tea. Aromas in Hoyts for coffee or Cosmo in the Valley for my beans.

Dance: Hades and Morticias every week, the Terminus every Tuesday, and sometimes the Beat, warehouse parties when they happened, and Flares for many many years!

Sounds, smells, tastes: The sound of my Morris Minor horn, the old car smell and blistering hot steering wheel. The smell of W&N oil paints, photocopies and the awful taste of cask wine.

PA: 

Tell me a little about two or three of your intimate/influential artist colleagues and peers at the time?

AM:

I admired a lot of people particularly Jane and Brian, who are so generous with their time, knowledge and experience and without them this project wouldn’t be possible. They are both close friends.

John (Griffin) – for his dedication to the underground culture in Brisbane. He had a great ability for bridging many different subcultures together through music.

He was the first definitely in Brisbane to develop a style of DJing specifically playing post-punk, garage, rock etc and including electronic music. His iconic Flares club which had it’s first beginnings at Mac’s in George st in ’82 was John’s anti-rock/aggressive/masculine alternative.

PA: 

Aside from exhibtions or events mentioned above tell me in some detail about another of your most vivid and early exhibition/arts event, exhibition experiences? Why was this event also important to you, what legacy has it produced for you?

AM:

Seeing Stelarc at Moca in the warehouse probably around ’86. The meat hooks feeding into the flesh on his back and then being hoisted up by chains to the rafters, skin stretched to breaking point. The silence as the hooks were removed I will never forget. Stelarc explaining his meditative state to control the pain. It was confronting to witness such an act.

PA: 

Tell me in some detail – if relevant- about any direct measure of support, patronage and interest from established Brisbane/Qld galleries/institutions you received during this early time in your career, were you in a commercial gallery or major institutional exhibtion?

AM:

Absolutely none.

PA: 

Tell me about the types of ephemera you made or designed, how, with what materials, where they were placed or distributed, flyers, posters, invites, newsletters? Why did ephemera matter so much at the time?

AM:

I created lots of flyers for various events – firstly through exhibitions and parties through That, and then press ads and flyers for club nights and events. I had no idea what I was doing and just found imagery that I liked from old magazines, or bits and pieces I had collected, rubbed down some letraset and made a collage. Then off to the local photocopy shop that had blue toner in one of the machines and a good guillotine. I knew all the spots around town and the valley to drop off flyers and also places for posters. I must have distributed many thousands of flyers over the years.

PA: 

And the notion of archiving and photo documentation during this period, was this important for you?

AM:

I always remember Jane (Richen) meticulously collecting and archiving, taking photos, and saving things I wanted to throw out. It didn’t seem important to me at the time. I would have taken photos if I had the money to afford film and processing. I’m grateful others had the foresight to catalogue and collect.

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