Remembering Martha

Driving installation / mobile exhibition / photographic documentation — 2012–2020
Martha was a mobile artwork: a driving installation that existed on the streets rather than in a gallery. A 1989 cream Mercedes hearse, she was acquired from a funeral director in London and driven back to Manchester, operating as a moving presence within everyday urban space.


Over an eight-year period, the vehicle was driven, inhabited and adapted as both an installation and a working studio. Artwork was produced in the back of the hearse and displayed through its large side windows, allowing the vehicle itself to function as a mobile exhibition space. As an object in motion, Martha disrupted the visual language of the street, carrying strong cultural associations of ritual and ceremony into ordinary, public settings.


The project developed through touring and sustained use. Martha was used to travel across the UK and Europe, including journeys to Berlin, Croatia and Milan, and became part of music festivals, street-based interventions and collaborative events. Alongside visual work, the vehicle was integrated into sound-system culture, touring and working with Dub Smuggler Sound System and operating within festival environments.


Rather than occupying a fixed site, the work unfolded through movement, repetition and encounter. Images document moments where the vehicle sits awkwardly within familiar contexts, creating a quiet tension between the symbolic and the everyday.
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Martha functioned as a living, breathing piece of art — a difference to the norm — allowing meaning to accumulate over time through presence, travel and use.