Kirsty Martinsen is a painter, writer, filmmaker and performer who lives and works on Kauna land (Adelaide, South Australia). She has a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the South Australian School of Art and a Diploma of Painting from the NY Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

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In 2016 she approached New York Theatre Director Erwin Maas to collaborate with her on a self portrait performance idea called BODINESS, based on her changing relationship with her own body due to MS. In 2024 BODINESS was included in the Adelaide Festival’s Neoterica exhibition finisage, and the inSPACE Creative Development Program at the Adelaide Festival Centre.

 

An abiding love of drawing and colour plus the focus on her body continues throughout every aspect of her work and BODINESS is the umbrella everything fits under.

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In a world of fast decisions, literalness, the need to know and be told how to think and feel, Kirsty is interested in the opposite. She’s interested in the quiet, slow surrendering of a need to know or be told, and the layers and textures of our relationship with ourselves. She loves to work from life, either with people or plein air, working outside amongst the trees, birds and sunshine, drawing.

Kirsty has exhibited in Australia, US, UK and Amsterdam. Her short film, Breathe, won the Mercedes Matter/Ambassador Middendorf Award at X Marks The Spot: Women of The NY Studio School, the 2018 Alumni show. In 2016 she participated in the Australia Council’s Sync Leadership Program; sat on Arts SA’s Richard Llewellyn Art and Disability Trust panel; performed in the 2016 Fringe in Spring written by Patricia Cornelius and Directed by Maude Davey with No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, and in Jérôme Bel’s GALA in the 2017 Adelaide Festival. In 2018 she was commissioned by SBS and SA Film Corporation to make a short documentary called Limited Surrender, available here.