Martin Brown’s work is based on observation, that of the city in which he lives, and the history of painting. His concern is the architectural idiosyncrasies in the urban environment - the interaction of the old and new.

“I think of the city as having a certain kind of architectural legacy that is destroyed or moderated by following generations. In this slow, piecemeal development of the urban environment, I constantly see cycles of urban decay and redevelopment.”

His finely crafted paintings reference different periods and styles within the Western painting tradition, and, in a sense, the way he moves between identifiable styles within this vast history, emulates the changes and shifts in the architectural design he sees around him - be it popular, traditional, vernacular or so called polite.

“I want to convey a melancholic nostalgia for a lost past, by describing an environment through a filter of different historical perceptions.”

Since moving to London in 2003, he has found some inspiration in seventeenth-century Dutch painters, who began to remove painting from religious and mythological frameworks and concentrate on radical depictions of everyday people and social situations from many different walks of life.

“I have consciously drawn from their depictions of everyday life to look at the contemporary modern world, where there would have been a tavern scene before there is now a DJ playing records.”

He has taken as his subject for the group of works assembled at FRED for what is his first solo exhibition in the UK, a snapshot of the urban social scene in the area of London in which he lives, and in which the gallery is found. Focussing on the people, bars and events that have changed Hoxton, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green almost beyond recognition, Brown has created a document of an area under transformation, during a period of great talent and innovation.

Martin Brown was born in Canberra in 1971. He has shown widely in his native Australia, and been included in exhibitions here, in Russia and China. He is represented in collections in Australia and the UK.

He lives and works in London.