Posts Tagged ArtPolitic
Brian Haw
Feb 8
New Website
Jan 5
I am happy to announce that my new website has finally gone live. You can find it at mikemarcus.co.uk
Elizabeth
Nov 20
An out-take from the shoot we did for the London Nude Tech Calendar. It is the first serious shoot we did together and Elizabeth was a wonderful, relaxed model.
All proceeds from the calendar go to the charity Take Heart India. You can see the image that was used in the Guardian.
Recent street interventions
Aug 19
Space
Aug 17
I am putting together an Arts Council funding application and exhibition proposal for a large relational art installation somewhere in London. Up until now I have mostly put my work on the street with the occasional gallery show. However I do not find either environment to be an ideal place to show my work.
Street installations are hard to control. I'm to getting sick of sneaking around trying to avoid police and (ironically) the issue of vandalism (people tagging over, destroying or removing my work) is discouraging me in the sense that I do not with to be part of any type of territorial battle.
Galleries tend to be dry and exclusive and I feel that they exclude and alienate as many potential viewers as they encourage. Rather than disseminating good art, commercial galleries are only interested in showing work, which will generate sales, to a public who are able to buy.
Because of this, I am looking for a space which is neither street nor private. An in-between space where a sense of public ownership can be fostered but I could still retain control over installation and preservation of my work.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
In the past I have used street art, and particularly the medium of the pasted poster to disseminate political ideas.
There is a jewish religious law which prevents the destruction of the 'written word of god'. This usually manifests in the practice of burying decommissioned holy texts such as bibles and prayer books on consecrated ground. The religious jewish population of Israel are extremely fanatical about keeping their laws in a very literal sense. Interestingly for this project the religious and zionist lobby overlap considerably and both have significant political clout - It occurred to me that it might be fun to give them a conflict of interests.
I propose that houses in danger of demolition are identified and their outsides papered with blown up copies of jewish texts. The religious right would protest violently to prevent their demolition despite the fact that they are the very group who pressure the israeli administration for increased settlement building activities in the occupied territories.
Apart from the obvious human rights benefits of such a project, for me as an artist I am attracted to the surreality of the mental image it invokes. I think that it could lead to some extremely visually arresting photography - Hasidim in full religious garb, preventing bulldozers from accessing rows of houses clad in black and white calligraphic forms.
Paint
Apr 3
Character study – watercolour on paper
Final painting – oil on canvas
February the 12th sees the first print release from the new Exogamy #2 series
The image features a triptych of intersexual hybrid figures, each a digital “genetic” synthesis of my own self portrait with that of a woman who I encountered in my daily life. In this case, I met each of the donor females via a different internet social network.
There will be an accompanying release of 33 unique large format public works, one placed in each of the London boroughs. This is indicative of a new direction for me, marrying my ’street art’ and ‘fine art photography’ careers into one unified practice.
The edition consists of 85 20×16 inch silver gelatine photographs (plus 4 selenium toned Artist proofs) on 300gsm fibre based semigloss paper. Each piece is individually hand printed by myself in the darkroom from a digital internegative. The edition size is intentionally large in order to keep the price low and enable ordinary people to afford to purchase a print during the current economic climate.
Synthesis #1/1
Jan 11
A rough sketch for the forthcoming “Synthesis” series – A digital hybrid between a human and a mannequin.
Ramallah
Sep 3
I climb onto the bus and check myself. I’m not in danger. Sure there was a minor problem but the remnants of my racist upbringing have amplified my justifiable concern into outright paranoia. As I choose a seat I believe that the other travellers want me dead.
I was having a great time. Flitting around Ramallah market responding to the wild gestures made by people who desperately wanted to be photographed. I couldn’t eat another thing. My stomach too full from the cakes and fruit given to me by shopkeepers.
On the way to the bus I stopped at the Mosque. As I took off my shoes, two teenagers sparked up a conversation with the minimal English that they possessed. One introduced the other as Mah’med, I repeated his name. Their attitude changed, they noticed that I had pronounced the word with a Hebrew “chet” rather than an English “h”. They asked a few questions in Hebrew. I said that I didn’t understand. They switched to English and asked if I spoke the language of the Jews. I said no.
Was I being followed to the bus station? Probably not. But after lifetime’s exposure to propaganda, it certainly felt like I was.
I was interrogated at the checkpoint. Treated like a Palestinian. I was happy for that. Happy to feel first hand the humiliation I had seen subjected on others. Today I wasn’t a Jew. I had left my Israeli ID at home. I held my British passport against the bullet-proof window while a child with a gun barked instructions at me. Today I’m not a member of the master race and these boys are more dangerous than the guys in the mosque.
The average Israeli would tell me that to go to Ramallah is to face certain death. This fear fuels the conflict and absolves us from guilt every time a young mother gets shot in the face. Few have travelled 10km from Jerusalem to test the theory. If they did, they would know that it is fiction. That’s not to say that there aren’t dangerous people here, it’s just a matter of perspective. In all the visits I have made to Palestine this is the only time I have felt remotely threatened.
In hindsight it wasn’t a good idea to go into the Mosque. Religion is the root of this evil and the one place I might find the Jew killers everyone warns me about. It’s no coincidence that Baruch Goldshtien and Igal Amir both wore a skullcap.
Walking between bus stations in Jerusalem I cross the racial border and see a gang of religious-zionist youth with M16’s and grenade launchers slung across their backs. I recognise them. They belong to a group known as “Benei Akiva”. My parents encouraged me to attend their meetings when I was a child.
