Mark Maxwell
Mark Maxwell is a British artist and creative consultant. He works in various media including painting, video and installation.
Life and work
Maxwell was born in Withington, Manchester and studied art and design at Salford College and later Suffolk College. In 1987 he was an assistant to artist/musician Brian Eno on live events involving the creation of set and lighting elements to live concert performances.
Creative Consultant
In 1992, he worked with designer Carl Hahn on the design of the 'History of the Pop Video' at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) London and in 1995 worked with Jonathan Park and Mark Fisher at Fisher Park Design Consultancy, projects included the Voodoo Lounge Tour - The Rolling Stones.
In 1998 he collaborated with Jonathan Park (now Studio Park Consultancy) on several projects including Sony PlayStation live event (feat. Jamiroquai), the illumination of churches in Poplar, London, England, for the Lansbury festival, set and projection design for Roger Waters Tours (In the Flesh), Amnesty International concert (Radiohead) and designs for the 2002 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. A site specific sculpture was created for the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) utilising aluminium, etched glass and slow colour changing LEDs.
In 2003 Maxwell created the video contents and the set design for pop group Feeder, the tour - 'Comfort in Sound'. Later in 2003 Mark was asked to design 'experiences' for Madame Tussauds. Set design, concepts, video creation and lighting were created for several projects including the 'Hulk Experience' and in 2004 the 'Spider-Man Experience' which tied in with the releases of the Marvel films by Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures.
Artworks
His artworks have been exhibited in many galleries and are in various collections including Barclays Bank plc, the National Australia Bank plc, Liberty Reinsurance and Britel Fund.
In October 2006 he exhibited at The artsdepot Gallery in North London. His exhibited works included videos of metals undergoing electrolytic processes. He has been exploring this unusual artform since the early nineties.Also exhibited a video entitled 'Gethsemane' referencing the poem by Rudyard Kipling about Christ and the soldiers on the front line in the Great War and a large sculptural wall relief in braille entitled Three words...
In 2007 he was invited to exhibit at St. Bartholomew the Great and created a large scale sculpture consisting of 200 kg of candle wax entitled ‘Atonement’ .A short film was created ‘Positive Negative’ depicting a crucifix undergoing reverse electroplation which was projected onto the wax sculpture.
St Giles-without-Cripplegate Church commissioned Maxwell to create an installation to commemorate the 400th anniversary of poet John Milton. Entitled ‘Paradise Lost’ the installation consisted of huge swathes of laser cut text taken from the poem of Paradise Lost and suspended over the nave of the church.
In 2009 Maxwell was invited to exhibit new works in a solo show at the Museo Pedro Gilabert In Almeria, Spain. The show was entitled 'Al hilo de la memoria...' (The thread of memory...)'. The Show consisted of several artworks on aluminium panels, an exterior site specific sculpture and a large barn like structure which dominated the interior of the main gallery. This installation was a wooden structure resembling a barn with an attic-like interior, filled with memorabilia, strange and common objects such as old tin boxes, musical instruments, weights, scales, clothes and bottles. Two separate video projections of sunflower fields in their last days of existence are projected over the objects and the walls of the wooden slatted interior. The sound of crickets and flies can be heard along with a gentle breeze blowing through the sunflowers.
In 2010 Maxwell was invited to be an artist in residence at Mas des Graviers in the south of France. He created 3 separate large scale ‘camera obscura’ installations. With specially selected lenses he constructed the obscuras using found materials within the Mas. The most ambitious obscura was built facing Mont Sainte-Victoire (the mountain made famous by the paintings of Cézanne). The reflection of the mountain was captured within the obscura.
In the summer of 2010 Maxwell began work directing a new short film entitled Naturaleza Meurta (Still Life). Set in Spain 1936. The story is about a soldier (International Brigades) fighting in the Spanish Civil War against Fascism and Franco's regime. The Film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival (short Film Corner) and the European International Film Festival, Paris in 2012.
In 2011 Maxwell was invited to exhibit a version of his sound and light sculpture 'Breathe 3' at the Raven Row Gallery in East London. The Installation is part of the Show called 'Gone with the Wind'. With other works by Max Eastley, Takehisa Kosugi and Walter Marchetti. Curated by Resonance FM.
In October 2011 Maxwell's experimental video painting 'Electra-Raw' was selected by the Open Gallery for the Open Prize exhibition .The show was held at Shoreditch Town Hall, London. The video painting depicted a crucifix undergoing reverse electroplation. The rules of the Open Prize, dictate that the work must be produced using a 'locked off' camera and, therefore, no camera movement and without any editing whatsoever.
References
1. Total Production Magazine - November 1999 2. Total Production Magazine – September 2000 3. Design Week – Art Article – May 1997