Mark Titmarsh
Mark Titmarsh PhD, (born 1955, Ingham, Australia) is a visual artist working in painting, video and text. His paintings and filmwork are currently held in public collections across Australia, and in private collections in Europe and the United States.
In the 1980s he established an international reputation as an experimental filmmaker exhibiting in Europe, North America and South America winning awards at Ann Arbor and Montreal International Festivals. In Australia he was a significant contributor to the development of the postmodern debate in the visual arts in his role as co-editor of the Visual Arts magazine, On the Beach and as a new image painter included in Perspecta, Art Gallery of NSW, 1989.
In the 1990s he co-founded the Sydney based artists group Art Hotline that exhibited ephemeral works in non-gallery everyday sites. He also edited a book documenting their activities between 1992 and 1995. Much of this work could be described as post-painting objects in that they take the form of 3 dimensional constructions that refer specifically to the conceptual aspects of painting. His screen based work included video and experimental websites that were exhibited in Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific in 2000.
His current work executed under the rubric of ‘expanded painting’ is painting about painting or painting that dissimulates into objects, videos and texts. Recent work has included paintings on industrial materials, environments of fluorescent string, video works for mobile phones and performances using painterly materials. In early 2006 he was a cofounder of the artist run space, Loose Projects.
Mark is currently a tenured, part time lecturer in the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, where he has taught Image Making and Interdisciplinary Studies since 1999.
Prior to taking up these appointments, he was a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney where he has taught Theory and History of Art Production, Studio Theory, Electronic and Temporal Arts, and Painting, lecturer in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Western Sydney. Previously, he taught Drawing (Visual Research Illustration) in the Design School, University of Western Sydney; the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales; and the National Art School. Additionally, Mark has taught Video, Filmmaking, Art History and Theory, and Mass Media and Popular Culture.
Mark is active in issues surrounding the arts, having been a co-founding member of WAAR (Working Artists Against Ralph) and PEAASS (Promoting Electoral Awareness of the Artist’s Status in Society), two groups that were formed to defend artists’ rights and raise awareness of their contribution to the national cultural environment. He was a co-founding member of Group 3 three, an artists’ collaboration exploring the boundaries of painterly practice through installation and photographic documentation; and Art Hotline, a consortium of 20 artists working mainly in ephemera and installation. He was the co-founding editor and a regular contributor to the Sydney-based visual arts magazine, On the Beach, as well as a contributing writer for Australian Art Collector magazine, where he was Associate Editor from 1997 to 2001.
Mark was a co-founding member of the Super 8 Film Group, a Sydney-based organization for the promotion, distribution, and exhibition of Australian professional experimental filmmaking. He was the founding member of Metaphysical TV -- a group of 5 experimental filmmakers whose work relied on reconstructing fragments appropriated from television imagery – and Assistant Coordinator, and then National Coordinator, of the New Image Research program at the Australian Film Commission from 1991 to 1994.
Among other qualifications, Mark holds a PhD degree in Painting from the Universtiy of Tecnology Sydney and a Masters degree in Visual Arts in Painting from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and has studied at St. Martin’s College of Art, London; the University of London; and the Pietro Vannucci School of Fine Arts and the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy.
A native of Brisbane, Queensland, he lives with his wife and two children in Sydney, Australia.
In the 1980s he established an international reputation as an experimental filmmaker exhibiting in Europe, North America and South America winning awards at Ann Arbor and Montreal International Festivals. In Australia he was a significant contributor to the development of the postmodern debate in the visual arts in his role as co-editor of the Visual Arts magazine, On the Beach and as a new image painter included in Perspecta, Art Gallery of NSW, 1989.
In the 1990s he co-founded the Sydney based artists group Art Hotline that exhibited ephemeral works in non-gallery everyday sites. He also edited a book documenting their activities between 1992 and 1995. Much of this work could be described as post-painting objects in that they take the form of 3 dimensional constructions that refer specifically to the conceptual aspects of painting. His screen based work included video and experimental websites that were exhibited in Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific in 2000.
His current work executed under the rubric of ‘expanded painting’ is painting about painting or painting that dissimulates into objects, videos and texts. Recent work has included paintings on industrial materials, environments of fluorescent string, video works for mobile phones and performances using painterly materials. In early 2006 he was a cofounder of the artist run space, Loose Projects.
Mark is currently a tenured, part time lecturer in the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, where he has taught Image Making and Interdisciplinary Studies since 1999.
Prior to taking up these appointments, he was a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney where he has taught Theory and History of Art Production, Studio Theory, Electronic and Temporal Arts, and Painting, lecturer in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Western Sydney. Previously, he taught Drawing (Visual Research Illustration) in the Design School, University of Western Sydney; the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales; and the National Art School. Additionally, Mark has taught Video, Filmmaking, Art History and Theory, and Mass Media and Popular Culture.
Mark is active in issues surrounding the arts, having been a co-founding member of WAAR (Working Artists Against Ralph) and PEAASS (Promoting Electoral Awareness of the Artist’s Status in Society), two groups that were formed to defend artists’ rights and raise awareness of their contribution to the national cultural environment. He was a co-founding member of Group 3 three, an artists’ collaboration exploring the boundaries of painterly practice through installation and photographic documentation; and Art Hotline, a consortium of 20 artists working mainly in ephemera and installation. He was the co-founding editor and a regular contributor to the Sydney-based visual arts magazine, On the Beach, as well as a contributing writer for Australian Art Collector magazine, where he was Associate Editor from 1997 to 2001.
Mark was a co-founding member of the Super 8 Film Group, a Sydney-based organization for the promotion, distribution, and exhibition of Australian professional experimental filmmaking. He was the founding member of Metaphysical TV -- a group of 5 experimental filmmakers whose work relied on reconstructing fragments appropriated from television imagery – and Assistant Coordinator, and then National Coordinator, of the New Image Research program at the Australian Film Commission from 1991 to 1994.
Among other qualifications, Mark holds a PhD degree in Painting from the Universtiy of Tecnology Sydney and a Masters degree in Visual Arts in Painting from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and has studied at St. Martin’s College of Art, London; the University of London; and the Pietro Vannucci School of Fine Arts and the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy.
A native of Brisbane, Queensland, he lives with his wife and two children in Sydney, Australia.
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Books by Mark Titmarsh
ISBN: 978-0-6480719-1-4
In this chapter I explored these questions by examining art making as an engaged responsiveness that
requires thoughtful action. By treating the studio as the place where action is framed between the push of ideas and the pull of materials I aim to show that art making like many other kinds of research is a way of discovering knowledge through applied practice2. Since art making is a hybrid of thoughtful research and active making it could be named, ‘research-making’. Research-making is a bringing-to-knowledge through the making of things operating on an interface between active physicality and thoughtful research.
status in the professional domain of contemporary art. It involves searching
the full spectrum of painting, from the processes that take place in the artist’s
studio right through to the intellectual arguments that position and justify
certain disciplines and genres of painting above others. Painting is a major
art form that has been both rejected and revered. It is often rejected as an outdated
tradition very long in the tooth, 40,000 years if we go back to Lascaux
and the rock paintings of the original Australians. Surely something so old is
irrelevant by now, lost in the stories of its own past, tangled up in conventions
that are like old coins, details worn away, but still shopped around as common
currency. On the other hand painting is revered because so many still practice
it, passionate students arriving at art school, art markets dealing in new and
old masters, galleries selling painted canvases for appreciation, investment and
decoration.
Painting, together with Sculpture and Architecture, forms an original triad
of classical arts dating back to ancient Greece. Since that time painting has
been the dominant art form, with an ability to say anything about everything,
including self and world, politics and literature, science and popular culture.
All of it is done in the hushed silence of colour on an immobilized surface. Over the last 100 years the position of painting has been questioned and
vanquished many times, in particular by photography and new media. Yet
somehow it lives on, commanding our respect like an immortal warrior or
at least some kind of urban zombie. It has become a hybrid of the living and
the dead, something contemporary and something remembered, involving the
use of craft materials that can plug into electronic media, sculptural objects,
performative events and theoretical texts. All of these elements form a new
kind of contemporary practice for painting that struggles for a proper name.
Papers by Mark Titmarsh
ISBN: 978-0-6480719-1-4
In this chapter I explored these questions by examining art making as an engaged responsiveness that
requires thoughtful action. By treating the studio as the place where action is framed between the push of ideas and the pull of materials I aim to show that art making like many other kinds of research is a way of discovering knowledge through applied practice2. Since art making is a hybrid of thoughtful research and active making it could be named, ‘research-making’. Research-making is a bringing-to-knowledge through the making of things operating on an interface between active physicality and thoughtful research.
status in the professional domain of contemporary art. It involves searching
the full spectrum of painting, from the processes that take place in the artist’s
studio right through to the intellectual arguments that position and justify
certain disciplines and genres of painting above others. Painting is a major
art form that has been both rejected and revered. It is often rejected as an outdated
tradition very long in the tooth, 40,000 years if we go back to Lascaux
and the rock paintings of the original Australians. Surely something so old is
irrelevant by now, lost in the stories of its own past, tangled up in conventions
that are like old coins, details worn away, but still shopped around as common
currency. On the other hand painting is revered because so many still practice
it, passionate students arriving at art school, art markets dealing in new and
old masters, galleries selling painted canvases for appreciation, investment and
decoration.
Painting, together with Sculpture and Architecture, forms an original triad
of classical arts dating back to ancient Greece. Since that time painting has
been the dominant art form, with an ability to say anything about everything,
including self and world, politics and literature, science and popular culture.
All of it is done in the hushed silence of colour on an immobilized surface. Over the last 100 years the position of painting has been questioned and
vanquished many times, in particular by photography and new media. Yet
somehow it lives on, commanding our respect like an immortal warrior or
at least some kind of urban zombie. It has become a hybrid of the living and
the dead, something contemporary and something remembered, involving the
use of craft materials that can plug into electronic media, sculptural objects,
performative events and theoretical texts. All of these elements form a new
kind of contemporary practice for painting that struggles for a proper name.
In this chapter I explored these questions by examining art making as an engaged responsiveness that
requires thoughtful action. By treating the studio as the place where action is framed between the push of ideas and the pull of materials I aim to show that art making like many other kinds of research is a way of discovering knowledge through applied practice2. Since art making is a hybrid of thoughtful research and active making it could be named, ‘research-making’. Research-making is a bringing-to-knowledge through the making of things operating on an interface between active physicality and thoughtful research.