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Environment for Sensory Deprivation

Drawing
1976 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Barry Martin (born 1943) is a graduate of Goldsmith's College and of St Martin's School of Art, both especially influential in the 1960s when he was studying there. He has worked in various media - including kinetic sculpture, film, performance, and the making of environments - but the constant in his work has been drawing, either as a working tool, as a means of recording and observing, or as an end in itself. For Martin, drawing is a system of signs analogous to those of language, and also an intellectual process of enquiry, analysis and proposition.

His gift of drawings spans his career from the time he was a student in the 1960s, until the 1990s. His performance work is represented by this drawing, ‘Environment for Sensory Deprivation’, 1976, which relates to an event he staged at St Martin’s School of Art, where he created an environment which the participants were obliged to enter and experience blindfolded. This work is in the Tate Gallery Archives, and was featured in 2004 in the BBC TV series ' Art of the Sixties: From Bronze to Beans'. For other drawings by Martin in the V&A collection see E.315-321-2006.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleEnvironment for Sensory Deprivation (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Pencil, pen and ink and red conte on paper
Brief description
'Environment for Sensory Deprivation', semi-abstract drawing of an interior by Barry Martin, London, 1976
Physical description
Semi-abstract drawing of interior.
Dimensions
  • Height: 20.5cm
  • Width: 25.5cm
Marks and inscriptions
'BM 76' (Signature and date; in pencil)
Credit line
Given by the artist
Summary
Barry Martin (born 1943) is a graduate of Goldsmith's College and of St Martin's School of Art, both especially influential in the 1960s when he was studying there. He has worked in various media - including kinetic sculpture, film, performance, and the making of environments - but the constant in his work has been drawing, either as a working tool, as a means of recording and observing, or as an end in itself. For Martin, drawing is a system of signs analogous to those of language, and also an intellectual process of enquiry, analysis and proposition.

His gift of drawings spans his career from the time he was a student in the 1960s, until the 1990s. His performance work is represented by this drawing, ‘Environment for Sensory Deprivation’, 1976, which relates to an event he staged at St Martin’s School of Art, where he created an environment which the participants were obliged to enter and experience blindfolded. This work is in the Tate Gallery Archives, and was featured in 2004 in the BBC TV series ' Art of the Sixties: From Bronze to Beans'. For other drawings by Martin in the V&A collection see E.315-321-2006.
Collection
Accession number
E.316-2006

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Record createdOctober 25, 2006
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