Martha Fleming

Martha Fleming is a Canadian-born interdisciplinary artist, editor, publisher, and academic. Her work encompasses several areas of discipline, combining research with the development of interdisciplinary creative capacities in areas of history, science, technology, design, and fine arts. She currently resides in the United Kingdom.

Education

Fleming was born in 1958 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[1] She lived and worked in Montreal, Quebec, until 1995, when she moved to London, England, to pursue a M.A (Master of Arts) from the University of London in The History of the Book. Fleming later received her PhD, titled From Le Musee des Sciences to the Sciences Museum: Fifteen Years of Evolving Methodologies in the Art and Science Interface from the School of Art, Architecture and Design of Leeds Metropolitan University.[2]

Early career

In her early artistic career, Fleming was an involved in various artist-run centres, and was an editor and publisher for art publications such as ArtForum, Open Letter,[3] and Block,[4] among others.

Collaboration with Lyne Lapointe

In 1981, Fleming established both a romantic and collaborative relationship with French-Canadian artist Lyne Lapointe.[5] The couple lived together in Montreal, Quebec, where they produced a large body of works that critiqued systemic oppressions and gallery or museum practices through a feminist lens. This includes a number of works that integrate themes of feminine sexuality, science, and botany, with drawing, sculpture, found-objects, and installation. Fleming and Lapointe are widely known however for their research-focused and site-specific projects (1981-1994), held at various abandoned and charged architectural spaces across Montreal, Quebec, New York City, New York, and São Paulo, Brazil[6] (for example, Casa Yaya, home of 1887 Dona Sebastiana de Mello Freire; These The Pearls, London; Duda, The Library in Emir Mohammed park, Madrid; La Donna Deliquenta, Vaudeville Theatre, Montreal).[7] Engaging such sites with feminist concerns, marginalization, and gallery and museum practices, Fleming and Lapointe addressed complex social issues historically embedded at such sites.[5] This focus of work was furthermore intended to “bite the hand that wouldn’t feed them.”[6]

Eat Me/Drink Me/Love Me, 1989

In December 1989, Fleming and Lapointe held their first collaborative exhibition in a museum setting, titled, Eat Me/Drink Me/Love Me, at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. The title and exhibition is a response to poet Christina Rosetti’s 19th century allegorical poem “Goblin Market”, which explores themes of feminine temptation, redemption, and conflicts between virtue and sensual pleasure, in a pastoral setting.[8] Eat Me/Drink Me/Love Me, transformed the Museum’s gallery in to a space of a domestic yet nature-rooted environment, with found objects, materials from the natural world, and other architectural elements. Together, these elements transfused the themes of emotional and sexual possibilities or restrictions for women, including a personal homoerotic twist, inspired from “Goblin Market.”[8]

Studiolo, 1995-1997

At the end of their 15-year relationship in 1995, Fleming and Lapointe had a retrospective, titled Studiolo, incorporating the bulk of research, processes, and discursive and creative projects that they shared. The show was exhibited at the Museum d’Art Contemporain in 1997, and later at the Art Gallery of Windsor 1998 invited by curator at the time, Helga Pakasaar.[9] Accompanied with the exhibition was an associated book, also titled Studiolo. The book showcases the philosophical, historical, and aesthetic frameworks associated to the exhibition, and is located in Artextes Editions of 1997.[9]

Other Collaborative works include:

  • HANGINGS, re-exhibited at Susan Hobbs Gallery (1995). Works from Musee de Science, and antique book covers displayed at the Book Museum in Bath, England[6]
  • Deja Voodoo (1996)[10]
  • La Salpetriere (1984)
  • The Spirit and The Letter and The Evil Eye (May 1994)

Later life

In 1995, Fleming moved to London, England. While her formative years collaborating with Lapointe still greatly influenced her later work,[11] her relocation to the UK immersed her practice further into interdisciplinary research fields, as she participated extensively in research projects and professorship at several major institutions.

Atomism and Antomism

Held at the Science Museum of London, England, Fleming’s exhibition Atomism and Antomism is an amalgamation of scientific objects of the Cartesian Enlightenment period, distributed in juxtaposing displays across the museum.  In a similar light to the collaborative installation La Musee de Sciences with Lapointe in 1984, the displays created a reflective and critical response to museum practices which reestablished new and multiple orderings of scientific tropes and meanings.[11]

Other exhibition-oriented project-collaborations include Split + Splice[12] at the Medical Museion of the University of Copenhagen (2008-2009);[13] Thinking Through Objects, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich (2008); and You are Here: The Design of Information, at the Design Museum in London.

Research and Teaching

Fleming has furthermore lectured, edited, and published in various contexts, including that of lectureships, scholarly journals, and art journals. Since the beginning of 2000s, Fleming has been the recipient of several grants, and has been involved in several major interdisciplinary research projects, including, amongst several:

  • The Deputy Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute in 2014-2015[2]
  • A Senior Research Associate and consultant of the major interdisciplinary digital humanities research project, “Reconstructing Sloane", (2011 - current)[14]

References

  1. ↑ "Martha Fleming". www.gallery.ca. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
  2. 1 2 "V&A · VARI people". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
  3. ↑ Fleming, Martha. "The Production of Meaning: Karl Beveridge and Carol Condé". Open Letter. 1983: 147–8.
  4. ↑ Conde and Beveridge. “C/V Carol Conde and Karl Beveridge”. URL http://condebeveridge.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/web-cv.pdf (accessed Mar 2018)
  5. 1 2 Arbour, Rose Marie. "Lyne Lapointe: See, Hear, Touch". ESPACE. 87: 19.
  6. 1 2 3 Taylor, Kate (1995). "Art Review: Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe". The Globe and Mail.
  7. ↑ Susan Hobbs Gallery. “Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe: Work 1984/1994: Susan Hobbs Gallery January 19th - February 25, 1995”.
  8. 1 2 “Press Release: Installation on Feminine Pleasure to be Presented at the New Museum.” New Museum of Contemporary Art. December 1989.
  9. 1 2 Mays, John B (1995). "Two Lives Transfigured". The Globe and Mail.
  10. ↑ Bogardi, Georges (1996). "Deja Voodoo". Canadian Art: 61–65.
  11. 1 2 Goddard, Peter (1999). "Atomism & Animism: At the Beginning of Her Career, Martha Fleming helped create an Installation About an Imaginary Science Museum. Now in England, She Works as an Artist-in-Residence for a Very Real One". Canadian Art. 16: 64–70.
  12. ↑ Heymann, M. "Joining Art and Science: The Special Exhibition "Split and Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine". Medical Museion. 51 (4): 995–1001.
  13. ↑ Sodergvist, Thomas. "Museum Exhibitions as Products and Generators of Scholarship". Medical Museion.
  14. ↑ "Sloane's Treasures: Understanding Sloane's Natural Objects". Backdoor Broadcasting Company. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
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