Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 2: Performance MattersPresent: Elisa Alaluusua | Marsha Bradfield | Ian Brown | Sam Burford | Samantha Epps | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Maria Kheirkhah| Scott Schwager | Tansy Spinks | Charlotte Webb
Apologies: Aaron McPeake | Angela Hodgson
Ana Laura introduces the seminar, with thanks to Mark McGowan for coming to present his practice.
Marsha reviews themes from the previous TPE Pilot seminar (see notes on the blog).
Fig 2. Samantha Epps, Scott Schwager, Elisa Alaluusua, Mark McGowan
Fig 3. Ian Brown, Tansy Spinks
Fig 4. Mark McGowan
Fig 5. Charlotte Webb, Samantha Epps
Mark McGowan began his presentation with a video entitled ‘practice exchange’. It fuses projects in his practice, many of which are from reports by global press.
Mark is often asked to give artist talks - to speak about his work - and he counts himself lucky in this regard, because his practice is quite funny. It hits the main news, and gets whole pages in the Sun. So that’s attractive and quite simple. But his practice is actually quite complicated. To understand anything he does one would need to know something about his background. And, he very rarely talks about this past, which has an effect on his work. For example, there’s lots of rolling around and crawling.
One of the big questions about practice, Mark says, is your idea. So in your practice, your ideas are everything.
Also, you need to say, this is where I’m standing, this is the gallery you like, these are my friends, so, you take a position. So, he says, for this, he is kind of loathed by a lot of people. Even a close friend who strongly supports his work recently criticised his saying he’d vote conservative and work around that, which was, again, complex.
Mark works non-stop. He feels he can’t stop making things. Drawing, writing, making videos, posting on facebook. There’s no time to stop and think. He’s in the newspaper and hasn’t even done it yet.
There are ethics involved in the work as well. It’s all about language. He uses words like “re-enactment”. And, who pays for the work? How much does he get paid for a piece? Some work is Lottery funded – but how much? There is a selective interest in information (by the press).
Mark gets emotional with the work; sometimes, he gets yelled at. For example, he’s crawling through Elton and there’s “a load of guys yelling” at him “get up you …” Then they change mood to cheer him on. At the end of the day, he’s acting a lot.
The shame aspect is associated with life. Performance has a lot to do with shame.
‘Why is he doing it?’ is a question he asks himself a lot. He justifies his work with a view “they are amazing pieces of art” with really good producers, camera people and they are absolutely beautiful.
He has modelled himself after Robbie Williams.
When he gets a good article he sees it as a piece of art.
How do you assess the quality of the art? One aspect is it’s so layered. Mark’s performance is about taking risks. Most performance is shame-based he says.
What does his practice do for Mark? The main part of the work is the narrative. Before the event you can say anything you want. It’s brilliant. You could do a drawing, a set up photograph. The narrative during the event is changed - by alcoholics, children, the media asking “can you do this for us now?” Mark engages in it. He says he will do anything. Whatever you like. The narrative after the event is important. He has hundreds of films on YouTube. And these have hundreds of millions of viewers.
He loves making work. He can do a performance, make a video, put it on YouTube and finish within an hour. Practice is everything. Mark says, “I can’t stop… I want to make more.”
He likes the power of being the victim, or the scapegoat. “One of the problems is, I take their own bad faith [the press] and give it back to them.”
Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley. “They are my peers,” he says.
How do you get someone to look at something? How do you do that? How do you get an audience? You go and get it. “We are living in an era of ideas.” We are not living in an era of aesthetics, he reflects. Come up with something that will blow people away.
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