Last week I went to an event where Mark McGowan was giving a talk. I had never really heard about him before and was told it would be an interesting and entertaining talk.
It turns out Mark is a very controversial performance artist and has done some pretty crazy/brave things! Here is a list of some of his stunts and self-declared “protests”;
- Sitting in a bathtub full of baked beans with chips up his nose and sausages around his head, claiming to be the defender of the full English breakfast.
- Cooking and eating a fox to highlight the plight of “crackheads”.
- Arranging miniature models of Abu Ghraib prison in the shape of a Swedish teenager.
- Lying prone in New Street, Birmingham (a pedestrianised area) dressed as a soldier.
- Crawling the streets of Manhattan dressed up as and wearing a mask of US President George W. Bush and a “Kick My Ass” sign on his back
- Eating chunks of a Corgi dog in protest against Prince Philip for hunting foxes.
- Additionally he also publicises other “protests” which appear to have been impossible or unlikely for him to have undertaken. These include dragging a full sized London bus with his toe, and rolling a peanut from London's Goldsmiths College to 10 Downing Street using only his nose.
- On 29 November 2008, he performed a re-enactment of the assassination of Jean-Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police, outside Stockwell Underground station.
During the talk he showed us some of the videos he has made so we could understand what he does then went on to explain his thought processes behind it all. Here is the video he showed us:
What I got from this talk was that it is really important as an artist to be enthusiastic about what you do. You should be living and breathing design or what ever profession it is you are in. When you design or create things it shouldn't be for anyone, it should be for yourself. Design is a passion not just a career...
