Martin Rayment is a multimedia artist who creates resin collage paintings.
The artworks are derived from vintage Hollywood glamour, B-movie’s, and retro-futurism. His work hosts: Wrestlers, Movie stars, Ballerinas, Villains, Lasers, Saints and Saviours. His distinctive style takes the accoutrements of Hieronymus Bosch, the style of René Magritte and combines them with the Golden Age of Hollywood. This approach uses magazine cuttings and swirling brush strokes as the foundation for dramatic large scale resin-based paintings that tempt the viewers gaze.
Born in Berlin, he grew up in a house filled with books and magazines on History, Classic cinema and Surrealist painters. As an adult he became enthralled with the Golden Age of Hollywood and its theatrical, iconic stars, long dead to the world but somehow everlasting and immortalised in print. At this time he also discovered books on surrealism and realised the power of art. He became fascinated with the ability to capture and digest life experiences through creativity. While graduating from BA Fine Art in 2013 he explored as many art forms as he could and incorporated his childhood curious discoveries that ignited his curiosity. It was at this time that he combined unconventional collage mediums with modern graffiti techniques and bright vivid colours.
The process begins by scavenging for historic books and vintage Hollywood magazines. These publications, filled with iconic movie stills, glamorous portraits, quirky subjects and machinery, are the source material for his intricate collages. Rayment carefully selects and deconstructs these images, reassembling them into new narratives that go beyond their original context. He goes further and includes drawings, written extracts and photos from his past, encasing them in multiple layers of resin, he creates compositions that invite viewers to unravel their hidden meanings.
Typically, he begins by placing an interesting posture based collage and surrounds it with swirling ink and artefacts, he then adds a transformative Resin medium. Resin adds depth and glossy finish to the artwork, encapsulating carefully arranged images, enhancing their visual impact and imbuing them with a sense of timelessness.
Initially, the artwork evokes a sense of chaotic nostalgia, capturing the allure and glamour of a bygone era with futuristic sci-fi themes. Beneath the glossy resin surface, there lies hidden depths and stories. Included within the artworks are letters, artefacts and photographs from Martin's life which he places there to encapsulate, enshrine and dramatise. Viewers are invited to follow the visual narratives that appear to move across the page in an animated fashion, creating motion in a static image. A cryptic narrative that never quite reveals itself
Martin Rayment's artwork has been exhibited in art galleries around Europe. He is also the Co-founder and Co-Director of The Carousel, a Nottingham based creative community building which hosts artist studios, exhibitions and public art projects. The Carousel helps Nottingham's artistic community thrive. It provides a positive and inspiring home to emerging creatives and Nottingham's community. His goal is to secure its future and longevity for generations to come.
‘The Crytsal World’
2016
90 x 32 cm
Mixed media collage
Sold, in private collection
‘The dream was real’
2020
28 x 32 cm
Mixed media collage
in Private collection
‘X MOONS’
Animatronic Collage
2018
‘Mr. Ray’
2021
28 x 32 cm
Mixed media collage
NFS
Embryology and Eschatology
Birth and Death.
”The work tends to be quite cryptic, a lot of sections are made in wild flurry’s where I am hyper focussed on a particular emotion, theme or idea. When I first started I would take my time with these motifs meticulously planning every piece and progress could be slow and the outcomes predictable.
A turning point came when I worked with the talented Illustrator Rikki Marr. Amongst many things, he taught me the importance of working fast, not slowing things down with overthinking and being ever curious about learning new media. It was an important lesson for me and I began to allow the work to take the steering wheel, setting up the foundations and then letting the work conjure up its own theme’s and letting the stories reveal themselves to me, through me.
I then decided to be less precious and let the ideas flow directly onto the page, without apprehension and interruption from my usually cautious nature. It becomes very exciting when ideas happen naturally in the moment. All the different concepts begin to respond to each other in unplanned ways that create new narratives. It scares me to think that these outcomes would be undiscovered if I had paused too long to contemplate. It’s important to move forward.
In my work I cut most of the imagery from old Hollywood magazines that encapsulate ‘The Golden Age of cinema’. A starry eyed, fictional world that captivated the majority of western society from the 1920s through to the 1950s. It influenced people to dream big and aspire to achieve more in their lives. It helped define fashion trends, social norms, and the idealised versions of love and relationships. On the flipside it was predominantly dominated by white actors, directors, and producers which resulted in a lack of diversity. It also portrayed romanticised versions of reality that didn't accurately reflect the complexities of real life, causing people to reach for imaginary lifestyles. But it all really comes down to selling a lifestyle which we can never reach. In our modern lives we are faced with these same agendas but somehow it feels less classy, too stylized, un-charming and un-authentic. Our society certainly has progressed and although we have grown somewhat wise to the tricks of the Hollywood trade, we are still hoodwinked into yearning for those same un-achievable idealised lifestyles and we are prepared to pay handsomely for them.
Well, for all its faults, the golden age holds a special time in humanity. Dramatic, glamorous, immortal and timeless. It holds just the right amount of trickery and so this is the facade where I obtain my the source material for my artworks.
‘The Final Dance’ uses a lot of characters from the golden era, but also borrows themes from Ballet, Wrestling and Bodybuilding. It was made during the pandemic when everything was locked down and crazy. In the midst of this global catastrophe parts of society and people's relationships seemed to spiral into wreckage. I managed to find a quiet, calm corner of the studio and was given all the time to reflect on the madness. I decided to make my biggest painting yet. As I contemplated our reality at that time, it became easy to express themes of dramatic carnage, emotional thunderstorms and downfall within this particular painting.
But it is hard to reflect on. I posed this painting as my world.
I find it important to maintain links to the golden age through collage, aesthetic beauty and grandiose elaborate brush strokes. There can also be risks of ideas feeling too serious and dark. So an undercurrent of comedy and tricksters are always included to purposefully merge tragedy and comedy. Life can be difficult but it’s not all bad. Maintaining light and dark becomes a constant balancing act, both in subject matter and colour.
The visuals of caricatured tragedy which you might find in Theatre, Ballet and The Silent movie era also appeal to me. The over dramatic expressions and poses take an edge away from the seriousness of ‘The Golden era’ imagery. That is why I include those postures, expressions and poses. I also use wrestlers and bodybuilders to provide the other end of the spectrum. These juxtapositions display a symbol of manhood and the life choices men have as they mature into adults.
For the purpose of the artwork, these Wrestlers and bodybuilders tend to symbolise themes of aggression, toxic masculinity and Far-Right ideologies. So the end result depicts the playground of humanity, with all its beauty, drama warring factions and . It also shows the attributes of the universal human experience of: Birth and Death, Love and Relationships, Emotions, Growth and Development, Struggles and Challenges, Need for Meaning and Purpose, Communication, Creativity and Expression, Exploration and Curiosity, Loss and Grief, Time and Change and Survival Instinct.”
Image: NTU Summer lodge Residency, Special thanks to Harry Freestone
Photograph: Joe Clark for V21 Artspace
‘Break your backs and crack your oars men’
2021
15cm x 20cm
Mixed media collage
For sale
Light experiments.
‘Was it a cat i saw?.’
2022
32 x 42 cm
Mixed media collage
Sold, In private collection
‘The Lighthouse’
2013
32 x 42 cm
Mixed media collage`
Sold
‘Holiday season.’
2022
58 x 42cm
Mixed media collage
For Sale
‘All good artists drink absinthe.’
2018
58 x 42cm
Mixed media collage
For Sale