Mobile Installation & Driving Artwork, 2012–2020
Remembering Martha: An Eight-Year Mobile Installation Built From a 1989 Mercedes Hearse
Martha was a 1989 cream Mercedes hearse, bought from a funeral director in London and driven back to Manchester, where she spent the next eight years as a mobile studio, gallery, sound system and touring artwork, travelling through the UK and across Europe before being retired in 2020.
Finding Martha
Martha began with a straightforward decision to buy a hearse, a 1989 cream Mercedes, acquired from a funeral director in London and driven back to Manchester. A hearse carries strong, immediate associations: ritual, ceremony, endings. Taking that object out of its usual context and putting it to work on ordinary streets was the starting point for everything that followed.
Rather than restore her or treat her as a curiosity, I started using her, as a studio, as a gallery, and eventually as transport for a much longer body of work.
A Mobile Studio and Gallery
Over the eight years that followed, Martha operated as both a working studio and an exhibition space. Artwork was made in the back of the vehicle and displayed through its large side windows, so the hearse itself became the gallery, no separate space required.
Parked on an ordinary street, Martha disrupted the visual language around her. A vehicle built for ritual and ceremony, showing artwork through its windows in the middle of everyday urban space, created a quiet tension between the symbolic and the mundane that ran through the whole project.
On the Road
The project developed through sustained use and touring rather than staying in one place. Martha travelled across the UK and into Europe, including trips to Berlin, Milan, Slovenia and Croatia, covering long distances as both vehicle and artwork at once.
Each trip put the piece in front of a different audience without a private view or an opening, just a hearse, on the road, doing what hearses do, except this one had someone’s artwork visible through the back windows.
Sound System and Festivals
Alongside the visual work, Martha became part of Dub Smuggler Sound System, and I toured and worked with them as part of the crew, travelling to festivals and outdoor events across the UK.
At festivals, Martha doubled as backdrop, stage and campsite landmark, turning up decorated for whatever the moment called for, from sound system dates to standalone interventions like Bun The Tories, whose bunting she carried at one event without being built specifically for it.
The End of the Road
Martha was retired in 2020, after eight years of use. The project was never announced as finished, it simply reached its natural end, the way long-running, informal projects often do.
What stays with the project isn’t a single image or event but the accumulation: eight years of a hearse being driven, lived in, worked from and shown through, until presence and repetition had built a meaning that a static object never could.
Commission a Similar Project
If you’re interested in work that unfolds over time rather than sitting still, a piece built around use, movement and duration rather than a single object, this is the kind of long-running, unconventional project I take on.
Get in touch about a project like this →
Questions
What was Remembering Martha?
Remembering Martha was an eight-year mobile installation built around a 1989 Mercedes hearse, used by Mark Jermyn as a touring studio, gallery and sound system vehicle between 2012 and 2020.
What kind of vehicle was Martha?
Martha was a 1989 cream Mercedes hearse, bought from a funeral director in London and driven back to Manchester.
Where did Martha travel?
Martha travelled across the UK and into Europe, including Berlin, Milan, Slovenia and Croatia.
What was Martha’s connection to Dub Smuggler Sound System?
Mark was part of the Dub Smuggler Sound System crew, and Martha travelled with them to festivals and outdoor events across the UK.
What happened to Martha?
Martha was retired in 2020, after eight years of active use, bringing the project to a natural close.
Can Mark create a similar long-running or mobile project?
Yes, long-running, unconventional projects built around movement, use and duration are exactly the kind of work he continues to take on.
From the Journal
Eight Years of a Hearse
Dated entries following Martha, from the streets of Manchester to the Alps and the Isle of Arran, and the day the two of us were photographed together for the last time.
Selected Work