Martin Bennett: When I Can No Longer Fall In Love For The First Time

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present When I Can No Longer Fall In Love For The First Time, an exhibition of new work by Canadian artist Martin Bennett. On view November 19 through January 7, this project-based series of paintings offers a glimpse into Bennett’s collected insights of his family history and an exploration within the human tradition of doubt.

The exhibition delves into the inherited story of his great grandmother Nellie Taylor’s last words-- in lieu of Bennett’s great grandfather she had cried out for Augustus John, the celebrated British painter of the early 1900s. Nellie’s final words imparted a deep uncertainty about her daughter’s true father. Since she had worked as a housekeeper and cook for the painter William Holman-Hunt, it was likely that she would have crossed paths with Augustus John. This exhibition features snapshots from Bennett’s travels to August John’s home in Hampstead, England. With each new trip came an opportunity to view scenes wherein his own ancestry became perplexed.

The paintings are the products of photographs taken by Bennett on his travels, each work acts as a link to the greater story. The works are born of two dates, one marking the painting’s completion and the other noting its photographic counterpart; an homage to process and inception. Each painting is further removed from the original date of the photograph as Bennett sands their surfaces, ensuring an image both resolutely familiar while also distant in its final form. He is the mediator, both as artist’s hand and willful spectator to a developing onslaught of clues.