Martin Healy

Martin Healy (b. 1967)

Martin Healy works predominantly with the mediums of film and photography, exploring the connection between belief systems and perception and the point at which fact and fiction coalesce in a recorded image or object. The subjective interpretations of what is perceived as real often provide a starting point for his work. The use of temporal or spatial dislocation as a motif in early science fiction literature is referenced in the work and sites of technological or structural obsolescence are used as formal devices to explore this. These concerns have informed recent film works which draw on cinematic convention in form and structure.


Fugue was filmed while on residency at HIAP. The film references Edward Bellamy’s influential utopian novel ‘Looking Backward’ (1886), in particular the experience of Julian West, the protagonist of the story, who wakes from a trance-like sleep lasting over 100 years to a utopian society. The film was shot on location in Tapiola.