LIMITLESS: Original screen prints and installations by Martin Nelson

From a successful business owner in Hull, specialising in graphic design procured through the traditional craft of screen-printing, to later graduating from the prestigious Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, Martin Nelson has followed a precision of calculated form. 

“During my studies I started investigating the thought that art might be found within coded number systems, especially where an ordered and progressive mathematical repetition is dominant – one such system is Binary Code.”

Nelson’s screen – prints and installations are inspired by this computerised method of encoding data.  The work has its own colourful, abstract entity as it follows the pattern of binary digits to instruct us of the usually hidden abstraction of computer language.

The boundaries between printmaking and sculpture are blurred as the code may dictate a constructed relief form in the ‘real’ world. Seeing the abstracted world in a physical form provides a new depth of form with a tonal colour composition.  This methodology has inspired Nelson to realise a pathway of expression, conceptual imagery with a new awareness.

You can view Martin’s work at Studio Eleven on Humber Street from Thursday 12th May until Sunday 26th June 2022.

About Martin Nelson

Whilst at school, Nelson enrolled onto the evening classes at the Hull Art College (then on Anlaby Road). His generation were of the ‘it’s time you got a job mi-boy’ – and so it was. Fortunately for Martin, an inspirational high school art teacher opened a position for him at a local screen-printing company. After finishing a five-year apprenticeship based in Hull, Martin progressed to setting up his own business, MRN Screen Printing (now MRN Digital).  Later the Managing Director of D.E.N.A. Screenprint Limited based in Aberdeen.

At 53 years of age, Nelson decided to follow his desire for making art and in 2001 began studying for my HNC at the Aberdeen College. In 2007, he graduated with a degree in sculpture and with an MFA in 2008 from the Gray’s School of Art.

Martin Nelson’s work has been exhibited across the UK both in solo and group exhibitions.  Nelson’s work is recognisably collected nationally and internationally.