The Jaka Project

@martin.sexton

Martin Sexton is an Irish writer and  artist, based in London. Yet he describes all his work in all medium as writing - when this extension of his writing manifests into objects, it is often in unconventional material, such as: 4.5 billion year old meteorites, volcanic obsidian or he is writing in ice. Such as his large series of temporal ice poem installations, one marking the exact grave of poet and visionary William Blake for the first time on his 250th anniversary - or the poet John Milton (Paradise Lost) on his 400th. In his large scale installations or immersive ‘UFO’ films, he  merges the quantum with the secular world in explorations of the esoteric and outer limits of consciousness. When his work encompasses his sonic experiments, real levitation films, in scientific peer reviewed experiments, where he is levitating objects in a laboratory with his friend the physics professor Dr David Deak, using sound, or in his many collaborative soundtracks - it becomes resonant with the critic Walter Pater’s statement that: 

‘All art constantly aspires to the condition to music.’ 

Work is often presented in the self-styled form of a: ‘Futique’ described as a collectible work of the future - Futique being a portmanteau of: future/critique/antique and permeates through much of his practice - including his writing and specifically his meteorite, meta, Ai, Deepfake, VR, stereoscopic, UFO/UAP films and Augmented Reality works. 

He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including Tate Britain, Benaki Museum Athens, Wolfsonian Museum Miami, Poetry Library South Bank London, The Hydra Museum, and the Economist Plaza for the Contemporary Arts Society as well as a debut solo exhibition for the 56th Venice Biennale ‘Sex with Karl Marx’ at the Gervasuti Foundation. In 2015 he was awarded the Tithe Grant by The Blake Society for his 4 second film ‘No Turning Back’ featuring Diana Princess of Wales, judged by the director Sir Alan Parker. The same year he made a large scale installation for Sir Terrance Conran in London, a working active simulacrum of Les Deux Magots in Paris. He was also the original curator for Future Forests - a global eco initiative which first introduced the world to the concept of Carbon Neutral and went onto plant several million trees worldwide. 

In the summer of 2019 close to the WOMAD festival it became known he had conceived the world’s largest crop circle for the environmental activists Extinction Rebellion.
 

Selected Work: 

2023 - Meditations on Crime - Watcher (Stephen Lawrence) Universal Panopticon,  Venice Architectural Biennale 
2022 - Russia Report - The Biennale Library, Venice Biennale 
2019 - XR Crop Circle, WOMAD Festival UK
2019 - Extinction Rebellion Venice Biennale
2019 - The Futures not what it used to be  - Venice Biennale 
2017 - The Yeti Society - Karnac/Aeon Books 
2017 - Empire - Venice Biennale
2015 - Gervasuti Foundation, Venice Biennale - solo exhibit
2011 - Hydra Museum Hydra, Greece
2010 - Poetry Library, South Bank, London
2010 - Locus Solus, Benaki Museum, Athens2009 - ‘Blow-Up’ - Economist Plaza, London (for the Contemporary Art Society)
2007 - Wolfsonian Museum Miami
2005 - New Gothic, Tate Britain 2002 - Auto-Destruct - Middlesex Uni Press 
1996 - ‘We Love You’ Booth Clibborn Editions 
1988 - ‘Can U Feel It’ - Desire 
1986 - ‘in the Key of E’ Desire 
 

Selected Published writings:

Middlesex University Press 
Booth Clibborn Editions 
INQD
Le Document
Verbsap 
Kalied Editions 
Aeon/Karnac Books