Beginning his career at Elam School of Fine Art in the early 1990’s, Martin Poppelwell later studied with one of New Zealand’s most renowned potters, Ross Mitchell- Anyon, gaining a Diploma of Ceramic Design and Production at Wanganui Polytechnic. Poppelwell ‘hit the ground running’ - producing New Zealand pottery of a different kind. Items such as a clay nose, cat, swan, skull, rabbit, ruler; all these objects were often placed together as the work of an art installation.
Poppelwell’s clay works are often glazed with the same black and white graphic line and tinged with green. The texts written on them reflected all aspects of popular and high culture. A line from writer Katherine Mansfield, or a simple phrase ‘not again’ can be all used as a representation of the everyday New Zealand culture. This is a potter who knows about the lineage of modern and post-modern art and isn’t afraid to upend it.
If we look closely at Poppelwell’s work, one can see that everything begins with ‘the line’. Poppelwell is a prolific and adept graphic mark maker. He states: “I’m interested in marking my thought” and also talks of ‘building” works on paper and using “objects” as diagrams.
This graphic line transforms into lustrous text as seen in his pottery work, but also wanders through his grid paintings, which Poppelwell describes as “an infinite document…my unwritten theory”. Again his drawing is displayed in his colourful ‘patchwork paintings’, which are in rich colour and mark ideas from high and low culture to become a riot of colour, form, line and text.
It seems to Poppelwell, a renowned New Zealand artist for over 20 years, that the question and the answer appear insignificant. He is used to darting between the edges of high and low art for most of his career, poking a stick at the 'rules’ that have been applied within the art world, questioning, rummaging, contemplating, throwing out a cheeky question here and there, using everything within his means to make a work of art that satisfies. This is what makes him an artist of delight, intrigue, and drive. Just when you think you have pinned him down to a particular genre, again he is on the move.
Poppelwell has also worked within the mediums of printmaking, design, film, fashion, and textiles. Born in 1968, he lives and works in Napier, New Zealand. He has exhibited extensively in New Zealand public and private art institutions, including ‘Index: Martin Poppelwell’, Hastings City Art Gallery, 2016. His work is in the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, NZ MTG, Hawkes Bay, NZ Lawrence B. Benenson Collection, New York, USA, Reydan Weiss Collection, NZ/ Germany and Reverand Ian Brown Collection, Australia.