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Tess Martin

Artist working across animation, installation, and expanded cinema

  • All projects
  • Research Areas
  • Commissions
  • About
  • News
  • Behind the Scenes
  • Writing & Context

Research Trajectory:

My work explores how time is experienced and constructed, through material processes and spatial perception. Across film, installation, and animation, I investigate how moving images can function not only as representations but as experiences that unfold over time, whether as environments to move through, or as films to watch.

A recurring concern throughout my practice is how people situate themselves in relation to place, memory, and history when these are unstable or incomplete. Many projects begin with traces (archival fragments, landscapes, domestic spaces, or material residues) and develop through processes of reconstruction. Animation allows me to build images gradually through accumulation, erasure, and transformation, making temporal change visible as a physical process.

Over time, my work has expanded from single-channel films toward spatial installations that distribute images, sound, and objects across environments. These works often include individually experienced soundtracks that unfold through duration as viewers move through space. The moving image becomes something navigable rather than fixed.

Across different media and formats, my projects form interconnected constellations that examine:

  • how time becomes perceptible (Time as Material)

  • how memory seeps through place (Memory, Trace, Place)

  • how animation can reveal the unseen (Animation as Reconstruction)

  • how moving images can be experienced as spatial and temporal environments (Expanded Film Environments)

Rather than producing discrete pieces, I develop bodies of work that return to these questions from different starting points.


Recent press:

March 6, 2026, Re-creative podcast interview: Yuri Norstein’s Tale of Tales

Dec 20, 2025, Podcast interview: The Animator’s Friend

June 18, 2025 - Podcast interview: the Experimental Film Podcast with Ken Hess

June 13, 2025, Animated Documentary Blog podcast with Carla MacKinnon

May 26, 2025, Journeys into Genealogy podcast with Emma Cox (features HOW NOW, HOUSE?)

May 2025, ‘Binocular Briefs’ by Chris Robinson, Animation World Network (features HOW NOW, HOUSE?)

Sep 2024, ‘De-Reconstructing Memory and Documenting Times: Notes on the Margins of Animafest Zagreb 2024 Programs’ by Mikhail Gurevich, Zippy Frames (features 1976: SEARCH FOR LIFE)

April 2025, Stopmotion Magazine article (features STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER)

April 2025, Boing Boing article (features STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER)

Oct 2023, Zippy Frames review (STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER)

Oct 2023, Short Films Matter review (STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER)

Sep 2022, Cinemagazine review (Dutch language - STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER)

Jan 2020, interview and review on Zippy Frames (ORBIT)