Building Proposals (and Kate Nash)... by Mark Gubb

Just released by Nick Davies is a new project that I’m really proud to be part of. Nick is a really interesting artist, focussing most of his energies in to making publications. As such, he often flies a little under the radar, but if you look at the work he’s produced over the years it’s a growing body that anyone would be proud of.

This latest one is called ‘Building Proposals’ - made in response to the 50th anniversary of ‘Fantastic Architecture’ by Nick Higgins and Wolf Vostell (if you click their names it should you take you to a PDF of that publication. Not sure if it’s hosted legally or not, but it’s well worth a look).

Nick’s publication is a boxed work containing responses by 22 artists and 1 architect. The list of folks involved is pretty impressive - Chris Agnew, Sovay Berriman, Ricardo Bloch, Simon and Tom Bloor, Paul Carter, Stuart Crewes, Ryan Curtis, Nick Davies, Polly Gregson, S Mark Gubb, Gabrielle Hoad, Evy Jokhova, Scott King, Sean Lynch, Alex Murdin, Emily Speed, Simon Starling, Mark Titchner, Charlie Tweed, Paul Unett, Ian Watson, Bedwyr Williams, Sam Venables.

He’s only produced it in an edition of 69 (after the year it came out) and you can buy them for £25 through his website. I’d move quick if you want one as I imagine wit will sell out pretty fast.

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Secondly (and absolutely nothing to do with Nick or the publication), I wanted to flag up the Storyville documentary about Kate Nash - Underestimate the Girl. I’d not heard about it until yesterday when my friend, Kelly Best, told me about it. We were having a conversation about art and the art world (Kelly is an artist too) and the self-serving nature of the industry that surrounds you as an artist, and this documentary came up in conversation. I’ve just watched it today and it’s superb.

I’m a total sucker for music documentaries anyway, but this is a really interesting study of the reality of being a ‘successful’ artist, which could apply across pretty much any field - the struggle to retain integrity and the freedom to pursue your art on your own terms.

Watch it, it’s really good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p07ctstz/kate-nash-underestimate-the-girl

Joe Wicks in a Tin Foil Hat by Mark Gubb

At the start of the year I was invited to make a new work for a, primarily, online project space called Tail of the Pup. The invitation said it could be anything I wanted really and that people often approached it as a space to show something tangential to their practice or drawn from their research.

I thought about it for a while and kept coming back to a slight obsession I’ve had with a memory from Eastenders back in the 90s, of the character Joe Wicks wearing a tin foil hat. I won’t say much more as it’s all contained within the project itself, but go and take a look. There’s a specially produced downloadable PDF and everything.

For my project on their site, click HERE!

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...and they're open! Gubb + Boshier at Mostyn, Llandudno by Mark Gubb

So, the shows are finally up and open. It feels like it’s been a long time coming and, at last, other people can enjoy the fruits of mine and Derek’s conversations that began back in 2016 and have culminated in these shows. I'd never call myself a curator, but have throughly enjoyed the extended conversation and opportunity to engage with such an extensive, and well known, body of work in an attempt to draw out something new.

I’ll be adding a proper section to this website just as soon as I find some time and space to do so, but in the meantime, below are a few images of the shows, taken by the excellent Jamie Woodley. The show itself runs until the end of June, so you’ve plenty of time to make a trip to North Wales and enjoy the chips and Victorian splendour of this seaside town.

There’s also going to be a publication containing some of the images you’ll see below. Watch out for an announcement through social media when that arrives with the gallery.

Thanks to all involved, particularly the gallery staff and their excellent tech-team, Robert Fraser’s Groovy Arts Club Band, Gazelli Art House, Arts Council Wales, The University of Worcester and the wonderful man himself, Derek Boshier

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The Last Judgement - MOSTYN, Llandudno by Mark Gubb

PRESS RELEASE

NEW EXHIBITION SEASON AT MOSTYN, WALES, UK, BRINGS ARTISTS TOGETHER 'IN CONVERSATION'

Derek Boshier - It's Only When the Tide Goes Out... Selected works and ephemera, 1976 – 2018

S Mark Gubb - The Last Judgement

Exhibition Dates: 16 March - 30 June 2019
Opening: Saturday 16 March from 4.00pm - 6.00pm

Artists' Talk - Derek Boshier and S Mark Gubb will be in conversation with writer and art critic Chris Fite-Wassilak - Saturday 16 March at 2.30pm

MOSTYN, Wales UK is pleased to present two new exhibitions 'In Conversation' by Los Angeles based Derek Boshier and Wales based S Mark Gubb.

The gallery's ongoing 'In Conversation' series brings together two solo exhibitions and presents the dialogue, collaboration or similarity in exploring themes that can occur between artists. This iteration, which stems from a chance introduction through a mutual friend between Derek Boshier and S Mark Gubb, takes the series a step further with Gubb co-curating the exhibition by Boshier in collaboration with MOSTYN Director, Alfredo Cramerotti.

Derek Boshier, who first came to prominence as part of the British Pop Art movement in the early 1960s, is also known for his work with cultural icons such as The Clash and David Bowie.

The exhibition includes a range of drawings, paintings, prints and videos, along with lesser known photographic and sculptural works, and ephemera from the artist's personal collection. Through this broad collection of works and artefacts the exhibition reveals how Boshier's creativity steps beyond the studio or gallery space. Containing works from the last four decades of the artist's career, presented here is a never before seen portrait of an artist whose own work he has described as "art that's political, not political art".

The exhibition also includes works and archive photographs made in the 1970s when Boshier lived in the Welsh village of Llangadfan.

Taking Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of the same name as a starting point and reference, The Last Judgement by S Mark Gubb includes a range of new and existing sculptural works exhibited as an installation.

The exhibition builds on Gubb's long-standing use of popular culture and history in his work, along with his interest in historical paranoias, created by things such as The Cold War, and in our ability as individuals to influence the world around us, for better or for worse. As part of his research for The Last Judgement, Gubb revisited classic works from art history such as Goya’s ‘Black Paintings’, key works by Hieronymous Bosch and works by the acclaimed Welsh artist, Edgar Herbert Thomas, the latter a great-great uncle by marriage.

To accompany the season a combined catalogue, funded by the University of Worcester, will be produced containing a new essay by Jonathan Griffin.

Derek Boshier's exhibition is thanks to generous support of Colwinston Charitable Trust and the assistance of Gazelli Art House, London.

S Mark Gubb's exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

S Mark Gubb (b.1974,UK) lives and works in Cardiff. His work has been widely commissioned and exhibited in solo and group exhibitions for organisations including Artangel, Turner Contemporary (Margate), Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth), Postmasters Gallery (NYC), Matthew Bown Gallery (Berlin), Mostyn (Llandudno), Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), ICA (London) and PS1 MoMA (NYC)

Residencies/fellowships include URRA International Residency, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011), Standpoint Futures, Standpoint Gallery, London (2010), Cove Park, Scotland (2008), Arts Council of England’s International Fellowship at Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland (2005) and The Wheatley Fellowship at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (2005)

Permanent public works include commissions for Grizedale Arts, Nottingham Contemporary, Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth) and The Welsh Assembly Government.

He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Worcester.

Derek Boshier

Derek Boshier (b.1937) lives and works in Los Angeles. He attended the Royal College of Art where he was a contemporary amongst notable artists involved in the pop art movement such as R.B Kitaj, Allen Jones and David Hockney. It was within his ‘Image in Revolt’ exhibition at London’s Grabowski Gallery with Frank Bowling that Boshier launched his career, introducing icons of American consumer culture with the incorporation of big brand logos within his work.

Boshier’s work has been widely shown internationally, particularly in Europe and the USA. Along with numerous solo exhibitions Boshier has also appeared in several group exhibitions, including at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Tate Britain and British Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Centre Pompidou. His work is held by major public collections across Europe and the USA.

In recent years Boshier was the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the RCA (2016) as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship and NEA award for the arts, he is also an accomplished teacher and lecturer.

About MOSTYN, Wales UK

MOSTYN presents international art and culture of our time, activating people’s lives through exhibitions, cultural programmes and commercial activities. Situated in the coastal town of Llandudno, it is Wales’ foremost contemporary gallery and visual arts centre, serving as a place to form and share new perspectives through artistic/curatorial practice and audience engagement.

MOSTYN is part of Plus Tate, the UK's contemporary visual arts network.

MOSTYN receives fi,nancial support from the Arts Council of Wales and Conwy County Borough Council Art Service. Mostyn Gallery Ltd is a registered charity trading as MOSTYN.

MOSTYN, 12 Vaughan Street, Llandudno, Conwy, LL30 1AB +44(0)1492 879201 www.mostyn.org

Open Tuesday – Sunday 10.30am – 4.00pm ADMISSION FREE

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Be (In)Visible at ALL Times by Mark Gubb

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This is a post I made to start the year on my various social medias. To clarify, I don’t think I’m especially important and talking about my own posts feels horribly naval-gazing but it deserves some context.

There are lots of problems with the art world and the systems we exist within, but the above is a huge one. Just before Xmas I attended the Punk Scholars Network conference at Leicester DMU, ‘Doing Metal, Being Punk’. It was excellent. One of the presentations that really struck a chord was a paper by Sally-Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave about the important research they’ve done in to musician’s mental health. Check this link out for an article about it and a link to key findings, it makes for fascinating, if depressing, reading. Everything they have discovered could, I am confident, be mapped directly on to visual artists - insecure working conditions, confused notions of ‘success’, financial pressures etc.

One thing that really struck me was their findings around the pressure to be constantly providing new ‘content’. I’m paraphrasing their excellent research, but the thrust of it is that to remain visible and relevant, musicians need to be uploading new tracks as often as possible - weekly, daily, whatever - a crippling and impossible rate of production, all to satisfy the clamour for online visibility and the vain hope that visibility translates in to being picked up and heard.

In terms of our industry, Instagram appears to be a fair equivalent. How many times have you heard or been given the professional advice, ‘Post once a day to Instagram and/or twitter etc’? Build that online brand and visibility. Of course that doesn’t necessarily have to be a new piece of work, but it’s a piece of you all the same. 

Do you really owe your industry that much access to your creativity? And even if you’re prepared to do it, do you think it’s healthy that your industry increasingly requests that of you? Yes, there’s always a game to play, you want your work and creativity to be seen, but it should surely be on (y)our own terms, including how much and how often.

Artists have always had an ebb and flow of moments of visibility and moments in the shadows. I believe, each is as important as the other. The idea we need to be on show and visible all the time seems extremely unhealthy and counter-productive to experiment and risk. It serves no-one other than lazy curators who want thumb-swipes in the comfort of their office to replace getting on a train or bus to meet with an artist in their studio/workspace. Our environment.  

Equally, I’m not sharpening a stick to prod curators, it’s just a plea to take a breath, for your own mental health, and consider how much these things serve YOU as opposed to other people.