Exhibitions
Martin Thompson
Razzle Dazzle
19 Sep
–
18 Oct
,
2025
The exhibition presents a previously unexhibited suite of works by Martin Thompson (1956–2021). Thompson was a self-taught artist from the Wellington region who became renowned for his abstract drawings based on mathematical formulae.
The works in this exhibition were made in 2005 and 2006, during a period of production that culminated in his first solo exhibition in a public institution, Wellington’s City Gallery, a watershed moment which saw him present immersive, large-scale works for the first time in the form of poster-sized inkjet prints and wallpaper.
The remarkable thing about these works is that they significantly predate the wave of digital and post-internet painting that became a major force in the art market in the mid 2010s. Typified by luminaries Wade Guyton, Cory Arcangel, Tauba Auerbach and Seth Price, these practices responded to technology and the internet’s effects on aesthetics, culture and society. In a very ‘the medium is the message’ kind of way, they wielded both mechanical and traditional painting techniques with symbolic effect.
With their vivid, solid colour backgrounds and larger than expected scale, the works in this exhibition certainly speak more to the language of painting than we’d usually expect from Thompson. Although they look digital in nature, with imagery that appears variously as static, distortion, scrolling backgrounds, or the proto-representations of real world forms found in early computer games, Thompson’s work was not shaped by technological advancement or vast communication networks but by something more fundamental. His artistic direction was determined by Benoit B. Mandelbrot’s 1977 book on fractals,¹ which showed how simple mathematical rules can generate the complex structures we see in nature. The book championed the ‘art of roughness,’ which posited that even the messiest naturally occurring forms had an internal order and self-similarity, i.e. the property whereby parts of the object resemble the whole at different scales. From this perspective, the ‘art of roughness’ is nature's own artistry, a beauty found not in smooth, idealised Euclidean shapes, but in the intricate and seemingly messy reality of the natural world.
For years, Thompson sought ways to extend his drawings beyond the A3 and A4 graph paper he used and to gain better control over his colour palette. The works in Razzle Dazzle present a decidedly anti-digital approach to this problem of scale. Thompson used a Xerox machine to replicate, slice up, and reassemble aspects of his drawings to create much larger, more complicated compositions. In doing so, he furthered a rich artistic tradition. Even artists from New Zealand, like Billy Apple, Ralph Hotere and Paul Hartigan, used Xerox in their work. The technique is reminiscent of musicians like Brian Wilson and Brian Eno cutting and splicing audio tape.
Close inspection of these works' surfaces reveals a complex lattice of fine ridges that indicate where scalpel cuts have been made and edges have been butted up against one another. Intermittent smudges of high sheen indicate where excess glue has bled through and been wiped away. Each work is made from two panels, with one being the exact tonal reverse of the other, and each panel is assembled from many smaller pieces, some as small as 5mm square. By combining dense background colours with equally dense, uniform imagery in the foreground, he created a dazzling visual effect in which the two planes become interchangeable and difficult to define.
These works also bear witness to Thompson’s lived experience. A self-described ‘old hippy’ who identified as having Asperger Syndrome,² Thompson lived on the poverty line for much of his life,³ often carrying his work with him in a large folder. The compositions are adhered to thin box board, and their condition ranges from pristine to carrying the patina of an itinerant life; some are interrupted by missing pieces that have fallen away over time. The images we see today are a pragmatic retelling of a story that has survived the test of time.
Thompson’s work garnered significant international attention with his inclusion in the landmark 2005 exhibition Obsessive Drawing at the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. Curated by Brooke Anderson, the show made a splash because it brought forward the simmering debate about the role of the ‘outsider’ artist in the contemporary scene. Nearby, The Museum of Modern Art was paying attention. Their drawing collection had included work by self-taught artists since the 1930s, and with the rising profile of artists like Henry Darger and Martín Ramírez, such work had become essential for serious public collections to round out the story of modern art in America.
Thompson’s work has been exhibited extensively in commercial dealer galleries throughout New Zealand and internationally. His art is held in significant collections, including those of the American Folk Art Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the Chartwell Collection. In 2015, his work was the subject of a major survey exhibition, ‘Sublime Worlds,’ at Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
The works in this exhibition are presented courtesy of a private collection.
Thompson died in Dunedin in 2021. He had lived there since 2007, having fallen in love with the city because it reminded him of Wellington in the 1970s.⁴
References
¹ Guthrie, Kim. "Martin Thompson." Artist Profile, 2018, https://artistprofile.com.au/martin-thompson/, . Accessed 5 Sept. 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Marchini, Gloria. "Martin Thompson." Outsider Art Now, 7 July 2014, , https://outsiderartnow.com/martin-thompson/. Accessed 5 Sept. 2025.
⁴ Hickman, Bill. "Acclaimed 'Obsessive' Artist Martin Thompson Has Died." Stuff, 8 Sept. 2021, www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/126320155/acclaimed-obsessive-artist-martin-thompson-has-died. Accessed 5 Sept. 2025.
