Visitors to Mayfair this December have the chance to catch the emergence of a new artist who promises much. Martha Beaumont will be showing a series of large limited edition photographs in her first solo show, titled A Place Out West, at Delahunty Fine Art.

The 13 photographs on show will depict room-sized sculptural installations. Beaumont’s central theme is the desert of South West Texas, where minimalist artist Donald Judd established a centre for contemporary art in the early 1970s.

I’m grateful to Delahunty Fine Art for giving me the chance to show my work. It’s a very exciting opportunity. - Martha Beaumont.

Available in limited editions of 5, (some medium 42cmx 70cm, some large 89cm x 148) Beaumont’s photographic works play with perceptions of reality, often involving fine Trompe L’oeil paintings as part of her elaborately built sets. Theatrical and deadpan at the same time, the images have a grainy texture and evoke an analogue or vintage quality. Featuring the wide-vista deserts and lonesome trails of classic Westerns, this is America filtered through the eyes of a contemporary English sensibility. While fellow Northerner, David Hockney focused on suburban California skies and pools in his Bigger Splash canvases of the early 1970’s, Beaumont finds her subject in the plains and open skies of cattle country.

Wyoming is where Beaumont first became fascinated with the iconography of America during journeys with her family. But Marfa, Texas is where she found her spiritual home.

The American minimalist Donald Judd moved to Marfa from New York in 1971, buying up ranches where he could create large-scale sculptures and installations. Others artists followed, and several foundations too, so that contemporary art rather than cattle has long since been the area’s leading industry. Beaumont plays with the symbology of the distilled contemporary Americana that Judd and his followers created, already so long ago.

In Martha Beaumont’s Texas, a hand-painted road sign to warn drivers of leaping deer is installed like a sculpture in a set. A painted desert backdrop completes the set, shimmering in the heat. Viewing Beaumont’s cinematic photographs, the eye travels deep into her distant blue painted hills, twice removed from reality.

Beaumont graduated with an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds in 2013, after extensive studies in painting. Since then she has participated in group shows at Degree Art in Vyner Street, and Eleven Fine Art in Pimlico. In addition to the powerful influence of Donald Judd, Beaumont cites Gregory Crewdson, James Turrell and Thomas Demand – as well as Henri Rousseau and film directors Wes Anderson, Wim Wenders and Rock Hudson era Cinemascope - as major influences on her work.

We are delighted to host Martha Beaumont’s debut, we look forward to welcoming the many people who are keen to see the launch of this fascinating new artist. - Damian Delahunty, director of Delahunty Fine Art