The Blind Task of Sleep

Martina Copley is an artist, curator, educator and writer working across different modalities of practice. An apprehension of contingent orders, the work doesn’t have a set form. Sound, idea, object and modality are collated to set up a structural space for something to exist, a space in which the work moves towards an opening and at the same time asks questions about itself.

Martina has exhibited with Bus Projects, RMIT Project Space, Seventh, WestSpace, City & Docklands Libraries, Melbourne Festival and Liquid Architecture. Collaborating with other artists and writers Martina has published work with the Expanded Writers Collective, Runway Journal, no more poetry and Bloomsbury Academic. Martina is Artistic Director Chair at Blindside Art Space. and lectures at RMIT University, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and LaTrobe College of Art + Design, Melbourne.

Her doctoral research project at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2019, The movement of the aside considered the transposition of the rhetorical figure of the aside as a poetic strategy in art.

Recent exhibition projects and publications include H–Love Letters and Other Correspondences, 2024; RePost, Mailbox Art Space, 2024; Protected: Archipelagos of grief: crises partially digested, Expanded Writers Collective, Sydney Review of Books, 2023; these pages, dear friend, Bookworks #4, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne; Chorality, A to Z of Creative Writing Methods, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022; The General Public, 99% 2022; Writing the Virus, Expanded Writers Collective, Runway Journal #45 Asemic 2022; Lowline, Love Outdoors, Moreland City Council, 2022; these pages, NO NO NO MAG Issue 2, no more poetry, 2022; Strange Alchemies [Heavy Breathing], with Bridie Lunney and James Carey, RMIT Project Space, 2022; Offering: A Fragmentary Index, with Josephine Mead, Liquid Architecture live Mono-poly, 2022; Pant and doorbell thump is wants wants, with Lou Hubbard, BUS Projects, Melbourne; The other writing, Seventh, Melbourne, 2020; Doubting Writing/Writing Doubt, ACCA + RMIT non-fiction Lab, 2019; No Notes (This is writing), with Francesca Rendle-Short, 2017; Unhidden, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Between these worlds there is no ordinary continuity, Melbourne Festival, 2016; FM[X] What would a feminist methodology sound like? WestSpace, Melbourne, 2015; A Listener’s guide to bowing, Melbourne School of Architecture & Design, 2015; Black Painting, seventh, Melbourne, 2014; New Ancestors, City & Docklands Libraries, Melbourne, 2014; At dawn the image rings a dissonant tune that is inaudible to our ears and cannot be recalled, with Michaela Bruton, BUS Projects, 2014.

Martina works with contemporary artists and creative organisations as an independent curator of contemporary art and gallery manager in public, commercial and artist-run contexts. Selected curatorial projects include; As If Writing, MILK Reads #3, 2022: the humbleness and the cut away, Blindside Mobile 2022; Blindside Solo Residency Series 2020, Melbourne; Blindside Regional Art + Research Residencies, Mooramong, Victoria, 2020; Ego as Echo ii, Makiko Yamamoto, 2020, Blindside Satellite public screens; Works<30s No.46-55 – With Lou Hubbard, Nathan Gray, 2016, Blindside Play, Melbourne; I always read by listening to the text, 2014, Platform, Melbourne; Bridie Lunney: The place where the fire is kept, 2014, Phoenix Foyer Commission, Melbourne; Self Species, 2012, LaTrobe University VAC Gallery, Bendigo & Maroondah Gallery, Victoria; The Five Obstructions, 2011, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA, University of Melbourne; WALK, national touring exhibition, 2009; The Time It Takes, 2009, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, Victoria.

Martina is a lecturer and tutor at RMIT University and at LaTrobe College of Art + Design in Melbourne. She is an Artistic Director and the gallery coordinator at Blindside Art Space.