PRESS
Excerpt from John Bailey’s article ‘Illumination in the Heart of Steel’
The Age, November 6, 2016:
Industry is home to countless human stories, if you care to get up close. Zoya Martin’s exhibition of photography Talking Hands follows this train of thought. She has gone into the homes of more than a dozen workers from a wide variety of industries to talk about their work lives and try to capture something of that history via images of their hands.
Martin discovered early on that asking about the story of a person’s hands could get people to open up in curious ways. “I’m talking to them about their working experiences but I’m saying ‘so what were your hands doing? What were they feeling? Were they ever injured?’ And I’m getting details of their stories that I wouldn’t otherwise. Of course, it’s their story but it also makes them feel somehow separated from it when they’re talking about their hands. It’s this strange thing that’s worked.”
She began the project at home. “Dad’s got great hands. They’re always a bit dry and cracked and he’s always sporting a black thumbnail. He’s always building something. He actually built aircraft, but he can build anything, really.”
He also built their family house in Altona in 1980. “It was interesting hearing about the process of building the house and what he endured. Of course, I knew the story just from being in the family, but I’d never spoken to Dad and asked him what his hands experienced in the process.”
From there the project expanded in all directions: a boat builder of 54 years who described the mechanisation of his profession, and a stonemason lamenting the introduction of diamond-saws where once two hands and a chisel would do. There is a nurse from the former Altona hospital who recalls the days of delivering babies before anyone wore gloves, and Syd Sherrin, fourth-generation football maker whose family company was sold to Spalding but who still produces a few balls each year in his Williamstown garage.
“He spoke about how you turn a piece of leather into something that everyone loves, and something that could be used in an AFL grand final. It was about pride in workmanship. It wasn’t just a job.”
One lesson Martin kept learning was how “when you make something with your hands in that really physical, tactile way, you do become one with your work. Now that it’s all mechanised, even if you’re the one controlling the machine, there’s that distance between you and the product you’re creating. While I could see that all this mechanisation and automation was making things easier, and lesser toll on people’s hands, they were feeling separated from what they were creating.”
Excerpt from Lindy Allen’s article ‘Art&IndustryFest16: Talking Hands’
Issuu, January 20, 2017:
"Zoya has been able to capture something about each and every person in these beautiful photographs. It's really added depth to the festival. It recognises the hard work done by people in this area in a way that really honours their working lives."
– Donna Jackson, Artistic Director, Art & Industry Festival.
Excerpt from Melissa Longo’s article ‘Local Artist Lights up the Night’
InkCloud, October 31, 2018:
Zoya observed for many nights, shooting the unguarded moments, across a range of industries. The results reveal the surprising world that exists in the dead of night. Night Shift, much like the workers it represents, will do its best work in the dark. An outdoor light installation – the faces of industry will come to life at dusk.