Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb
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de Bruyn, Dirk. "Lynsey Martin: A Case Study of 1970s Australian Experimental Animation." Global Animation Theory: International Perspectives at Animafest Zagreb. Ed. Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji# and Hrvoje Turkovi#. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 233–252. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 30 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501337161.ch-014>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 30 September 2021, 15:24 UTC. Copyright © Franziska Bruckner, Nikica Gili#, Holger Lang, Daniel Šulji#, Hrvoje Turkovi#, and Contributors and Cover image Zlatka Salopek 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 14 Lynsey Martin A Case Study of 1970s Australian Experimental Animation Dirk de Bruyn Introduction I like to think of much of my work as being fi nely crafted with great attention given over to editing where each frame is important and the fi lm is as short or as long as it needs to be. MARTIN 2015 The history of experimental animation in Australia remains largely unknown outside its borders. Although Norman McLaren and Len Lye’s fi lms are recognized internationally within animation practice such experimental hand- made cinema generally sits less comfortably under a traditional animation umbrella. Such work occupies its creative and innovative margins. Australian experimental animation’s obscurity can be further explained by this activity being embedded in and framed by the avant-garde, non- narrative experimental fi lm cultures present in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s rather than being presented publically under an animation banner. Understandably, such local activity can fl y under the radar even within a broad historical sweep of national animation cinemas, like Giannalberto 233 234 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History, Volumes I, II, III . Bendazzi recognizes the deserved international reputations of Australian animators Dennis Tupicoff and Adam Elliot and the innovation of Bruce Currie, Ann Shenfi eld and numerous others ( Bendazzi 2016 ). The experimentation of Corinne and Arthur Cantrill, Sabrina Schmid and Neil Taylor is evident but not the abstract and graphic experimentation of Lynsey Martin, Michael Lee, Jonas Balsaitis and Hugh McSpedden, all so much part of the local Melbourne activity focused on here. The emergence and amenity of digital technologies and the resultant new image manipulation strategies have impacted animation’s defi nition. This shift invites a re- calibration and re- evaluation of such 1970s Melbourne experimentation in terms of animation strategies and techniques. We can locate rudimentary forms of those image manipulation strategies that now populate the fi lter menus of digital editing software within such work. In the networked- society the impact of the tyranny of distance on Australian culture’s visibility and accessibility also dissipates to some extent. As a result, the generation of Australian experimental animation to which Lynsey Martin belongs and within which he plays a critical role can be made visible. This discussion examines Martin’s practice and its position in relation to other local Melbourne experimental animation activity. The situation into which Martin’s work emerged was enabled by the earlier experimentation of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill in Melbourne and the Ubu Collective in Sydney. In Melbourne, the Cantrills promoted hand- made experimental animation through their magazine and workshops. This advocacy was infl uenced by the Ubu Collective’s earlier activity in Sydney in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Ubu Collective 1 included artists Albie Thoms, Aggie Read and David Perry, and the experimental animation Bluto (Thoms 1967) is representative of the Ubu Collective’s multiple outputs in this area. The Cantrills foregrounded hand- made and abstract fi lm, including this Ubu work, in their fi lm culture magazine. Cantrills Filmnotes was fi rst published in roneoed form in 1971. Despite this magazine’s international presence, it is interesting and ironic that many of the fi lms by the artists populating its pages remain obscure. Lynsey Martin’s neglected output is representative of this state of affairs. 1 This group further participated in Sydney’s alternative artist collective The Yellow House from 1970 to 1973 through multimedia events, light- shows, workshops and screenings. The Yellow House was initiated by Martin Sharp on his return to Australia from London. His notoriety rested on his involvement with OZ magazine. Sharp’s psychedelia also created Cream’s Desreali Gears record cover. Sharp is considered an infl uence and antecedent to the artists behind the irreverent Mambo Graphics clothing label. In 2000 the Mambo style was showcased in the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, through Reg Mombassa’s cartoon- like sculptures that are also reminiscent of Robert Crumb’s cartoon style. LYNSEY MARTIN 235 In step with Ubu’s Bluto Martin’s fi lms use hand- painting and direct on fi lm techniques applied to the fi lm’s surface. These fi lms further relate back to abstraction, the diary fi lm and found footage cinema. They use collage and design elements to test and explore the act of looking in both public and private space. Though incorporating, like the Cantrills, formalist elements, Martin’s fi lms relate back to the suppressed and invisible traces of everyday life, expressed though technical strategies that lie outside normal viewing habits. Martin’s experimentation fi rst came to public view in 1972 through a Cantrills fi lmmaking workshop documented in Cantrills Filmnotes . Martin describes his animation work as a self-funded artisanal practice: ‘My fi lms are essentially self- made, self- produced in the sense that as an artist, I aim to exercise control over as many aspects of the medium that I possibly can. That is production direction, photography editing, sound etc.’ ( Martin 2013 ). Martin’s experimental 16mm cinema remains largely forgotten in Australia today despite a portion of his innovative thinking available in Cantrills Filmnotes (Nos 9, 12, 16, 17/18, 23/24, 29 and 30) and a solid public screening programme through the 1970s and 1990s, before such 16mm experimentation was replaced in public screenings by Super 8, video art and new media. Film curator and artist Jim Knox has described Martin’s short innovative fi lms as ‘some of the most extraordinary cinema ever made in this country, and still largely unknown’ (Knox 2009: 49). Background Born in 1951, Lynsey Martin was introduced to photography through his father’s Minolta Rangefi nder 35mm camera. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he studied photography, fi lm and graphic design at Preston Institute of Technology and Victoria State College in Melbourne. This was a time when these institutions’ curriculum was loosely structured, allowing the freedom to follow your own intuitions (Martin 2015a ). Beginning with the use of his father’s camera Martin started to collect the still and moving image run- ins, which are part of the normal practice of loading still and moving image cameras. When loading these cameras Martin advanced the fi lm to avoid the fogged area. Without looking through the camera’s viewfi nder he would routinely shoot the window of his room. These short redundant strips of fi lm were saved, compiled and re-animated through the 1970s for the still incomplete work-in-progress, Frames . Such collected ongoing gestures mark Martin’s preoccupation with the mundane and everyday events at the core of his fi lm work. Similar habitual material appeared in the 3-screen version of Parts 1–6 in 1973. After his tertiary training Martin worked in graphic design and educational fi lm and television production and later for more than 20 years as a Secondary school teacher. Martin taught subjects such as Visual 236 GLOBAL ANIMATION THEORY Communication and Design, Art and Art History. He has identifi ed Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Kasimer Malevich’s House Under Construction (1914) and El Lissitzky’s Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919) as infl uences in his teaching and moving image practice. Lissitzky’s painting especially manages a strong narrative through its graphics. ‘As an Art teacher at Lakeside Secondary College in Reservoir, much of the work that I taught was heavily design based with a high emphasis placed on attention to detail, accuracy and fl uency in the communication of ideas’ ( Martin 2015 ). Expanded cinema While still at secondary school Martin began experimenting with multimedia projection using, this time, his father’s 35mm slide projector. In the late 60s, I was fascinated by photographs that I saw in magazines of ‘psychedelic light shows’ that formed the background to rock concerts in America where artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Cream, Janis Joplin etc. performed. All music that I was heavily into and the images were mostly abstract. I was already painting abstract pictures in acrylics on canvas. MARTIN 2015 Using inks, enamel and acrylic paints on coloured acetate and combining these techniques with found or discarded sections of 35mm fi lm, Martin created similar light show images to the ones found in the rock magazines. These images were further informed by the works of abstract expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. ‘Some of these images were very delicate, detailed and like mini works of art in their own right’ (Martin 2015 ). Using as many as seven slide projectors, ‘It wasn’t long before I was doing light shows myself at High School social functions with as many school projectors that I could commandeer’ ( Martin 2015 ). Such light shows were pursuits undertaken by a number of Melbourne contemporaries. James Clayden’s and Hugh McSpedden’s early performances incorporated projected slide material. Clayden’s John Cage- infl uenced three- screen fi lm and slide event, Black Dog (1971), incorporated half- tone positives and negative slides cut out of discarded sheets that were projected onto other images ( Clayden 1971 : 20).