In 2016 I began work on a book project called ‘Stop Tanks With Books’. The concept was to weaponise the medium to effect change. We always had two aims. The first was to garner international support for Ukraine in its’ continuing fight for independence, help end Russian aggression in Donbas, and call for the withdrawal of Russia from Crimea. The second aim was to counteract the wealth of fake news and racist disinformation the Kremlin was generating - material that Western media was often perpetuating and reproducing unchallenged and unchecked - by presenting real portraits of Ukrainians. The book would be sent out for free to a target audience of diplomats, politicians, peace negotiators, celebrities, NATO and EU members - everyone, in short, who we felt had it in their power to help Ukraine. By 2019, and after several intense editing sessions with David Campany, the book was ready in embryonic form, with each word in the book translated into three languages; Ukrainian, English, and Russian.

Then we waited for the books’ initial publisher to go to print. We waited and we pushed and we waited again. We repeatedly explained the urgency of the situation, that a full-blown invasion of Ukraine by Russia would happen imminently. But there was still no movement. Meanwhile, in October 2020, I moved my home and studio completely from London to start a new life in Kyiv, Ukraine. In late November 2021, I very fortunately decided to approach the publisher Nazraeli Press in California, who immediately recognized the urgency of the book and the threat from Russia. This was a real turning point in the project. Chris at Nazraeli Press worked tirelessly with me throughout the following ten weeks to get the book’s design formed so it might best deliver our urgent message about deterring an imminent war. The printer in Istanbul, MAS matbaa, also recognising the urgency, dropped everything to print the book at top speed so that the book might start to do its work and galvanise the international community to act before it was too late. He even designed and made packaging and helped get the books posted.

We then put in place ‘book HQs’, in London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, and New York, where centralized hubs could work to send out the 750 copies I could afford to print. Carrie Scott, Lou Stoppard (who I work with on another book which will embrace events in Ukraine), Tanya Logacheva, Anna Yavorska, Ed Mayor, Mattia Nelles, Gwen Sasse, David Campany, Alexandra Prysiazhniuk…these are some of the many people who have worked non-stop to both assemble the recipient lists and to physically get the books delivered as soon as humanly possible. Four days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine we had succeeded in sending out about 150 to 200 of the complimentary copies. It is now day 11 of the war and a further 400 copies have been, or are about to be, sent out.

Making Stop Tanks With Books was my attempt to fight Russian aggression. My photographs, Lyuba Yakimchuk’s incredible short stories about living in Russian occupied Donbas, the research carried out by ZOiS about the 2.5 million people already displaced by the war, by 2018, and the ‘call to action’ are interwoven here not just to provoke empathy, but also to provide a clearer understanding of this brave, kind, misrepresented nation.

Ukrainians demand military, financial, humanitarian, and political help. It is of the utmost urgency to provide weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies, direct financial help to stabilize the economy and rebuild infrastructure, as well as humanitarian aid into Ukraine and on the borders. At the same time, Ukraine deserves a clear path towards EU and NATO membership. Most of all, as I write this on March 6th, we need NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine to stop the bombing of innocent men, women, and children. We still have copies of our book left, please help us get these to their target audience. If you know someone in a position of power, please contact me and we will send them a complimentary copy of our book with the most current ‘call to action’.

TV

https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/encore/20220307-a-snapshot-of-ukraine-mark-neville-on-photographing-the-country-and-its-people

https://www.3sat.de/kultur/kulturzeit/fotograf-mark-neville-bilder-aus-der-ukraine-100.html 

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/entertainment/celebrity/photographer-hopes-ukrainian-photo-collection-will-change-public-opinion/vp-AAUtgfh

 RADIO AND PODCASTS

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mark-neville-ukraine-special-episode-stop-tanks-with-books/id1439567112?i=1000553005487

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014pgw

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/49-stop-tanks-with-books/id1617276298?i=1000612416807

PRESS

https://c4journal.com/mark-neville-stop-tanks-with-books/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/mar/11/ukraine-stop-tanks-with-books-in-pictures?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2022/03/09/mark-neville-combat-la-guerre-avec-ses-photos_6116754_3246.html

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/23/brave-woman-symbolises-ukraine-mark-nevilles-best-photograph-kremlin-falsehoods

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/a-vivid-portrait-of-everyday-life-resistance-in-ukraine/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wn3m/ukraine-photos-mark-neville

https://www.1854.photography/2022/03/mark-neville-calls-on-the-international-community-to-act-for-ukraine/

The book was published by Nazraeli Press and has a limited commercial release there in America and in Europe/UK through Setanta Books

https://www.nazraeli.com/

https://www.setantabooks.com/collections/mark-neville

2019

Commissioned by GwinZegal Centre of Art

Shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/content/db2020-mark-neville

DB2020 Catalogue essay by Will Self

https://gwinzegal.com/editions/parade-de-mark-neville

An outdoor exhibition of prints at En Avant de Guingamp football stadium, Guingamp, Brittany, France, runs until October 31st 2019. Exhibition at GwinZegal Centre of Art, and the book ‘Parade’ published by GwinZegal Editions. All 70 images were taken between June 2016 and April 2019 within a 30 km radius of Guingamp, Brittany, France.

Brittany (‘Little Britain’) was the name given to the parts of Armorica colonised by Insular Celts from ‘Great Britain’ (this is where the ‘Great’ term comes from:- a Norman influence on English). Interestingly, this went far beyond the name of the territory - various groups of immigrants between the 3rd and 6th centuries established their own petty kingdoms in Brittany named after their original tribes in Great Britain, and the relations between ‘mother tribes’ and colonies often lasted for centuries.

From Summer 2016 to April 2019 I made six working visits to Brittany, mostly focusing on an area within a 30 km diameter of the small town of Guingamp.

Although some of its residents have absolutely no direct involvement with neither football nor farming, Guingamp is famous for both. Brittany has more than 40,000 farms, mostly oriented towards cattle, pig and poultry breeding, and cereals and vegetable production.

The city also hosts a professional football team called En Avant de Guingamp, which maintains a real ‘David and Goliath’ reputation...it won the French Cup in the 2008–2009 season while it was still part of the 2nd league, and beat Rennes to win the French Cup in 2013–2014. People from all backgrounds in the region seem to be supporters, particularly its agricultural community. Significantly, the exhibition of my prints will not only take place at Guingamp’s art centre, GwinZegal. Forty of the images are also displayed at the football stadium itself, as extremely large prints, lining the entrance. Around 19,000 people attend their football matches, and in the spirit of my project Port Glasgow, which was delivered uniquely to all 8,000 homes in the Port by the local boy’s football team, this project is also being returned to the local community through football. The Brittany farming community, which constitutes the primary demographic among En Avant de Guingamp supporters, are both the subject of, and the principal audience for, the print exhibition at the stadium.

I met many people in Brittany who have evolved complex, unconventional relationships with animals, and who have also found new ways to think about the treatment and consumption of animals as food. These relationships are explored both metaphorically and directly in my images. Jean-Roc, for example, a kind of horse whisperer who trains horses to stand on cars, spends his life working with abused animals and rehabilitating them...Melinda worked in an abattoir for thirteen years, and then one day decided she could not stand the death anymore, and now she lives with and gives a home to a host of disabled, abused, or rejected animals. Alain, who adopts ecological models, says the definition of ‘non-industrial’ pig farming is when the pigs recognise the farmer’s voice.. I was given a wealth of real, practical insights into new ways of living with and rearing animals - even if the endpoint is still animals as food.

Notions of utopia, or ecotopia, underpin these images of farmers, nuns, Breton dancers, baton twirlers, people breeding pigs, dogs, or horses, supermarket shoppers, football supporters and football players, families on the beach or attending a beauty pageant.

The resulting photo book and exhibition are now accompanied by a special publication containing interviews with Brittany farmers and a call to action written by Terre de Liens / Access to Land Network. The book urges support for a sustainable, humane, even ecotopian type of agriculture and greater access to land. Along with the photo book Parade, I have sent out this new publication Parade Texts free to the UK and European ministries of agriculture and food, key policymakers, and to both rural and urban schools and libraries both in Britain and France. The PDF of Parade texts, in both English and French language versions, can also be downloaded for free here:

Parade Texts, PDF in English

Parade Texts, PDF in French

2016

CHILD’S PLAY is a new book with targeted dissemination, a symposium, and an exhibition opening at the Foundling Museum on February 3rd 2017. 
In both book and exhibition Neville presents images of children at play from existing projects, alongside new images taken in diverse environments including Kenya and Ukraine. The photo book, which also features Adrian Voce’s text overview of his ground-breaking work in the field of children’s play,   plus an essay by curator Nicola Freeman, seeks to focus attention on attitudes towards play in the UK and how the conditions for children can be improved. Both book and show urge for the re-introduction of a new national play strategy which halts the closing of playgrounds and defends children's rights to play. In late January 2017 the book will be disseminated to key policy makers, experts and each of the UK’s 433 local councils, and a symposium on 20 March will explore the issue of spaces for play, looking at the real and imagined barriers to play in our cities, and focusing in particular on the privatisation of space.

http://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/events/childs-play/

2012

Slide installation consisting of 50 images, duration 20 mins, looped, 2012.

Commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum, exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum as part of the exhibition 'Factory Direct'.

'Braddock/Sewickley' is a series of fifty images which were initially exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum as a slide installation. The work examines the legacy of the steel industry in Pittsburgh, focusing upon the impact it has had in forming the contrasting culture and lifestyles of two of its boroughs, Braddock and Sewickley.

The extraordinary power of the steel industry to shape the life of its communities and the people in them remains extremely palpable in Pittsburgh. Why are we unable to create an environment which uniformly benefits from the steel industry? Why has it always been impossible for us to create a wholly positive, utopian vision of a society centred upon steel production, as depicted in the murals of John White Alexander in the Carnegie Museum? These are two of the questions which the slideshow poses.

Braddock is home to the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the first steel mill in America to use the Bessemer process, which now operates as a part of the United States Steel Corporation. Braddock lost its importance with the collapse of the steel industry in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. This coincided with the crack cocaine epidemic of the early 1980s, and the combination of the two woes nearly destroyed the community. In 1988, Braddock was designated a financially distressed municipality. However, in recent years new residents from the artistic, urbanist, and creative communities have gradually started to move to the area.

By contrast, much of the wealth generated by the steel industry is still very evident in Sewickley, visible in the glorious houses found in the Heights, in the village shops, and the local country clubs. While a few homes were being built in the late 1890's, Sewickley really took off after 1902 when the Allegheny Country Club relocated there, accelerating the settlement of the area as a haven for wealthy Pittsburgh residents. These social clubs used to be, and still are, an important connection in these circles.

Echoing the visual style of iconic photographers of the 1960s, 1970's and 80s who also looked at an America undergoing recession, Neville's slideshow of new images of the city explore themes of race, religion, education, leisure, tradition, class and ritual. Collectively the slide-projected photographs suggest that the same economic and social forces present forty years ago are still strongly at play now.

'The Port Glasgow Book Project', 'Deeds Not Words', and 'Braddock/Sewickley' make up a trilogy of works which explore notions of post-industrial identity in working class communities.

2012

Photo essay consisting of 20 images, 2012. Commissioned by New York Times Magazine

Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize 2013 by the New York Times   

'From December 2011 to January 2012, Mark Neville traveled around London, capturing diverse portraits ranging from nightlife to banking, education to community organizing, and the ways these worlds intersect.'

The work was made synchronously in response to a new text by writer China Mieville 'Oh, London, You Drama Queen', simultaneously commissioned by the New York Times Magazine for its March 2012 Photography Special Magazine on London.

Neville's catalogue text for the exhibition 'London/Pittsburgh':

Between late 2011 and summer 2012 I changed the direction of my practice in order to realise two commissions originating from America. The first of these came from The New York Times Magazine, and involved making work in London over six weeks (this resulted in Here Is London), and the second was an invitation from the Andy Warhol Museum to realise a project in Pittsburgh over a three month period (this became the slideshow installation Braddock/Sewickley). I had never worked for a publication before, nor had I ever produced work for immediate exhibition in an American museum. I had also never worked so quickly; the normal duration for my projects being a year or two. With a gap in production of around five weeks between one project ending and the next beginning, these two separate bodies of work became implicated with one another. Each provided me with an insight into race and class issues in the respective countries, contrasts between rich and poor, black and white, working and upper class, which is made explicit in the work. For me the biggest shock was the difference in race relations between the two cities. The black community in London appeared more integrated than in Pittsburgh; division of wealth in the UK seemingly still defined by an archaic and offensive class system, in America by race. 

The work I made in Pittsburgh has strong relations to two of my other projects which also focus upon societies centred upon steel production or ship building; the Port Glasgow Book Project and Deeds Not Words. In Pittsburgh I stayed and worked in two very different areas, Sewickley and Braddock. Much of the wealth generated by the steel industry is still very evident in Sewickley, visible in the glorious houses found in the Heights, in the village shops, and the local country clubs. While a few homes were being built in the late 1890s, Sewickley really took off after 1902 when the Allegheny Country Club relocated there, accelerating the settlement of the area as a haven for wealthy Pittsburgh residents. These social clubs used to be, and still are, an important connection in these circles. By contrast Braddock is home to the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the first steel mill in America to use the Bessemer process, which now operates as a part of the United States Steel Corporation. Braddock lost its importance with the collapse of the steel industry in the US in the 1970s and 1980s.This coincided with the crack cocaine epidemic of the early 1980s, and the combination of the two woes nearly destroyed the community. The demographics of these two Pittsburgh communities are divided along racial lines. In London the contrasts were found in localised venues. Boujis, a nightclub in South Kensington frequented by Prince Harry, Lloyd’s insurance market, and the London Metal Exchange speak of a perennially class-based establishment Britain which is at odds with the subcultures and lifestyles generated by abject poverty in the UK. 

Up until then, and subsequently, I have been realising projects whose primary audience, beneficiaries, and recipients are the very communities which featured in my films and photographs, with the art world sometimes absorbing the work later on. Here I was interested to understand what happened when the work was directly disseminated to a broader audience, such as the one which The New York Times Online spoke to, or the audience of a major public museum. 

Would it be possible to explore themes of social division without employing the targeted book and image dissemination which characterised my earlier projects? My feeling was that the images themselves had to work much harder than they had in previous projects, to be more explicit somehow. My audience was different. The plan was to echo the visual style of iconic photographers of the 1970s and 1980s who also looked at an America or Britain undergoing recession, in order to suggest that the same economic and social forces present forty years ago are still strongly at play now. I explored themes of race, education, leisure, tradition, class and ritual, and worked to make the images look timeless or historically indeterminate. I had viewed both London and Pittsburgh through a prism mixed with Charles Dickens and Norman Rockwell. Sometimes the bringing together of two bodies of work made in different locations can generate new insights and reflections upon social divisions in each, and this, for us, was the premise of both this book and the exhibition at the Alan Cristea Gallery, and the subsequent shows at the Silver Eye Centre in Pittsburgh, and the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow.    

- Mark Neville

IN THE PRESS

Diane Smyth, British Journal of Photography - Dec 2012

Between December 2010 March 2011 Neville spent two months on the front line of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, with 16 Air Assault Brigade making work as an official war artist. He made stills using multiple flash systems, conducted interviews, and also made 16mm movies, employing high-speed slow motion film cameras normally used in car-crash testing.

Films

'Bolan Market',  6 mins, digital transfer from 16mm film, Mark Neville, 2011

Bolan Market in Lashkar Gah, Helmand, is described as a success story by ISAF forces. Much of the population of Helmand Province survives through subsistence farming, often contending with brutal weather conditions, lack of clean drinking water, and basic or non-existent health and education facilities. Previously  part of Taliban ran territory, the area including Bolan Market began to flourish once again following its occupation by ISAF forces. Mobile phones, cars, and market stalls speak of the beginnings of commerce and trade. Nevertheless, Neville's silent, slow motion film depicts a much more complex relationship between the local population and British armed forces.

Neville shot the 16mm film by hand as he stood next to the machine gun which the 'Husky' armoured vehicle he was travelling in is armed with. When he requested if he could film on the ground, amongst locals, Neville was told by the crew of the 'Husky' that there were many Taliban sympathisers in the Market, and that he would either be 'killed or kidnapped within twenty minutes' were he to leave the tank. Whilst some of the local faces Neville films are apparently warm in their reaction to Neville's camera, and the presence of the tank as it proceeds through the Market, others are clearly feeling deeply uncomfortable, disturbed, or angered by the procession. 

Neville's film is only made possible through the deployment of an armoured vehicle and its crew: The footage is mediated through an apparatus of war and an occupying force, forming a disturbing meditation upon the relationship between subject and viewer.

'7.62mm',  11 mins, digital transfer from 16mm film, Mark Neville, 2011

'7.62mm' is shot on 16 mm black and white film, in another part of 'Bolan Market'. The title refers not only to the calibre of the machine gun atop the 'Husky' armoured vehicle which Neville is travelling in, but also to the precise height of one frame of 16mm film stock. The film consists of a continuous, dreamlike tracking shot depicting market stalls full of fruit. This could almost be an Afghanistan during more prosperous and peaceful times, were it not for the silhouette of the gun which remains a constant throughout, stamped upon every frame as a phallic presence.

'Backdrops', 9 mins 46 secs, digital transfer from 16mm film, Mark Neville, 2011

Filmed on the frontline in Helmand against backdrops depicting photographic or painted artworks from previous conflicts, 'Backdrops' dislocates elements of real life from the Province which are commonly presented to us by the media. Through a series of vignettes, life in the war zone is relocated to previous eras, and itself becomes part of a cycle of wars and their depictions. This contextualisation not only works to make us re-examine the works of Nash, Piper and Burke, and to relate these to war now, but also makes us re-examine our numbed response to the over-saturation of mediated images of Helmand. 

'Paratroopers', 7 mins, digital transfer from 16mm film, Mark Neville, 2011

The opening sequence of 'Paratroopers' features a container of gasoline being thrown upon the burn pit at a British Army patrol base in Helmand Province. The burn pit is where human excrement generated by the occupants of the base, and also secret documents concerning Taliban suspects, are dumped. Following this painterly metaphor for waste are a series of slow motion tableaux depicting the troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade mundanely occupying time between patrols and fighting; taking makeshift showers, boxing, or smoking. The film depicts modern warfare as one still very much centred upon the prowess of the male body.

'MSST Clinic', 6 mins, digital transfer from 16mm film, Mark Neville, 2011

Military Stabilisation Support Teams (MSSTs) work with Afghani villagers to help realise and fund their proposals for new infrastructure projects. Locals bring their proposals and claims to a clinic held by the British Army on a weekly basis at this patrol base in Helmand. Sometimes these clinics might receive proposals from locals involving the funding of irrigation ditches or Mosque developments, and sometimes they involve compensation claims pertaining to the destruction of land, property or cattle by ISAF force armoured vehicles. The overworked Warrant Officer holding the clinic is seen here working with a translator, and together they often deal with forty cases in one day. As is the case with any welfare or claim system, especially one operating in a region brutalised by decades of war, occupation, and abject poverty, fraudulent claims are common. 

'Growing Up In Helmand' Photographs

Neville's photographs of Helmand Province were often taken whilst he was out on patrol with 16 Air Assault Brigade. Over 60% of the population in Afghanistan is under 25 and some of the British soldiers serving are undoubtedly still in their late teens. Using a plate camera and powerful flash units, his images depict a military occupancy by young people, almost children, of a country also populated by young people and children. Often emerging like phantoms from the landscape, alone or in pairs, these young Afghanis have obviously taken on adult responsibilities very early in life, mirroring the age of the teenage troops they are engaging with.

Press

Melanie Vandenbrouck, 'Mark Neville’s Helmand Work at the IWM London', Apollo Art Magazine, 13/8/14

BBC Radio 4, 'Mark Neville at The Imperial War Museum', Saturday Review BBC Radio 4, 26/7/14

Mark Neville, 'Bullets at Dawn; How I survived two months in Afghanistan', The Guardian, 16/7/14

Mark Neville, 'Bringing War Home', BBC2 Newsnight TV, 15/7/2014

2010 - 2012

Hardback photo and text book, accompanied by a letter, with unique dissemination.

The book ‘Deeds Not Words’ is not being commercially distributed. Instead it was sent out to each of the 433 local authorities in the UK, and to environmental agencies internationally, to raise awareness of issues around the handling of toxic waste and the reuse of contaminated land; it deals specifically with a court case that was brought in Corby, Northamptonshire, by a group of families ( the Corby 16) affected by toxic waste following the reclamation of the town’s now defunct steel works in the 1980s. The book is distinctive in that it is not simply a ‘photo book’: Half the book comprises a section, entitled ‘Words Not Deeds’, with a brief history of the rise and fall of the steel industry, an exploration of the strong identity that migrant Scottish workers in the steel plant forged around them, and a detailed exploration of the Corby 16 court case, including more than 20 pages of scientific evidence concerning the link between chemical pollutants and birth defects.

The sixty photographs in the book represent the community as a whole, not simply the families at the centre of the case. They concentrate on the persistence of a Scottish identity in the town, even amongst third and fourth generation families, and on various manifestations of ‘beauty’ - the entrants in a beauty contest, girls at a nightclub, the children dressed for the town’s Highland Games- encompassing industrial growth and decline, subsequent regeneration and community solidarity. The photographs of individuals who were involved in the court case - George Taylor and Ben Vissian, both of whom were born with fingers missing - are given a context, literally surrounded (in terms of the sequencing of images in the book) by other members of their community, who had no part in the court case but whose lives have nevertheless been shaped by some of the same socio-economic factors.

The aim of the book is to effect a real policy change regarding land reclamation, and to alter the attitude towards the disposal and management of toxic waste in the UK.

The book project 'Deeds Not Words' opened as a gallery exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, London, running from August 2nd to September 29th 2013. It was accompanied by a symposium upon government policy regarding contaminated land, organised by environmental activist group 'ClientEarth'. Chaired by MP Joan Walley, the discussion led to the creation of a manifesto which will be presented to Parliament.

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/mark-neville-deeds-not-words

'Deeds Not Words' at featured on Channel 4 News, 7pm, September 5th 2013:

http://www.channel4.com/news/mark-neville-corby-photos-pollution-toxic-birth-defect

IN THE PRESS

Daniel Jewesbury, Source, Winter 2011

Liz Adams, Amc2, Summer 2012

BBC News, August 1th 2013

Channel 4 News, 7pm, September 5th 2013

Interview with David Campany, Hotshoe, June 2013

Gemma Padley, British Journal of Photography, Dec 2013

2008

‘Fancy Pictures’, 16mm film, 18mins

‘Tula Fancies’, Medium format audio-slide show featuring 45 photographs, 14 mins

‘Four photographs for the Bedroom’, four prints, 85cm x 70cm

Commissioned by Mount Stuart Trust, and installed at the Visitor Centre, and Mount Stuart House, Isle of Bute, Scotland, 2008

‘Fancy Pictures’ (16mm film loop, 18 min, silent, 2008)

The term ‘Fancies’ was first used in 1737 by art chronicler George Vertue to describe paintings by Mercier of scenes of everyday life, but with elements of imagination, invention or storytelling. Later, the name ‘fancy pictures’ was given by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the supreme examples of the genre produced by Gainsborough in the decade before his death in 1788, featuring rural life in particular.

Shot in the grounds of Mount Stuart and on Bute farms, the film ‘Fancy Pictures’ features several ultra slow motion sequences of indigenous animal life filmed in front of backdrops taken from Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century portrait paintings in the Dining Room at Mount Stuart. The portraits include works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay and Sir Henry Raeburn. The film questions the role of landscape in portrait painting, the changing relationships between landowners and animal life, and creature symbolism in film history.

Technological advances in photographic techniques, and how we use them to frame animals, say as much about value systems in Britain today, as a painting by Reynolds tells us about the aristocracy’s relationship to the land two hundred years ago. This connection was made using backdrops, so that the wildlife action in the foreground seems like an elegant graffiti.

‘Tula Fancies’ (audio-slide installation, 45 stills looped, 14min, 2008)

Neville’s photographs of rural life on Bute reference Old Master painting, scientific imagery, wildlife books, Soviet pictorial types of the 1920’s, editorial, social documentary, and fashion photography. The slide projected images collectively suggest that there is a mystical, religious relationship between animal life and the island community, present in the reality of rural life, but also evident throughout the art and craft works commissioned for centuries in Mount Stuart House itself. The variety of photographic genres Neville employs works to undermine the notion of a unified, authentic, social documentary vision, in favour of a fluctuating depiction of identity.

The title of the work refers both to the 18th century term in British painting, ‘fancies’, designating imaginative scenes of quotidian rural life, but also to Tula, an agricultural region in Russia. Neville approached the taking of each image on Bute as if he were imagining a document of the Soviet Union, searching for faces, landscapes, and scenes that seemed to resonate with his knowledge of existing imagery found both in social documentary photographs and Russian Cinema. Further investigating the validity of this comparison, the artist then presented twenty of the images to a head boy and head girl at local school Rothesay Academy, claiming the shots were taken in Tula, and asked them to make an accompanying soundtrack inspired by mother Russia. The resulting, haunting soundtrack is the work of Megan Alexander and Kerr Slaven, and is inspired by the images and the misinformation about their origin that was provided.

‘Photographs for the House’ (group of four framed prints, 2008)

‘Goat Pedicure’ (silver gelatin fibre print, 64cm x 75cm, 2008)
‘Mr and Mrs Curry’ (cibachrome print, 75cm x 85cm, 2008)
‘Supper’ (c-type print, 75cm x 85cm, 2008)
‘Newborn Lamb’ (c-type print, 75cm x 85cm, 2008)

Four photographic portraits of people and places from the Isle were hung in the House, grouped together. They contain subtle and contradictory references both to the history of photography and to painting. The images reference the House’s relationship to painting sometimes through the poses of its subjects, which may seem to echo Gainsborough’s ‘Mr and Mrs. Andrews’, or sometimes through the lighting, which might quote Caravaggio’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’. However, they simultaneously also refer to the impulse in 1920’s social documentary photography, later common in Soviet pictorial types, to orchestrate its subjects into stylized compositions that glorify the relationship between people and the land. The suggestion being, that it is people, not machines, that are the source of a country’s wealth. This message is counterbalanced with the contradictory references to painting genres which reinforce the idea that power is a result of land ownership, and that images should foremost be aesthetically pleasing in order to communicate.

IN THE PRESS

Interview with David Brittain, Source, Autumn 2009

Martin Vincent, Mount Stuart, Art monthly - Jul-Aug 2008

Neil Cooper, 'Fancy Pictures', The List - Jul 2008

'Academy duo's sound of music', Buteman - 6 June 2008

Keith Bruce, 'Soviet Fantasy', The Herald - 19 May 2008

'Fancy Pictures', Buteman - 16 May 2008

Martin Vincent, 'Workers of the World', Metro - 15 May 2008

Susan Mansfield, 'Fancy Pictures', The Scotsman - 9 May 2008

Jonathan Griffin, 'Now Showing 2', 2010

'Fancy Pictures' Mount Stuart Press Release - May 2008

Liz Shannon, 'Fancy Pictures', 2008

2004-2006

Book production and unique dissemination as a public artwork, 2004/2005

Photographs, text, and audio, later forming a gallery installation in 2006

As shown in Modern Art Oxford, and Dick Institute, Kilmarnock. Elements from the Project were later exhibited in ‘Parrworld’ at Haus Der Kunst, Munich, Jeu de Paume, Paris, and Baltic Mill, between 2008-2010.

In 2004 Neville spent a year as an artist in residence in Port Glasgow, the world centre for shipbuilding fifty years ago, now a town facing an industrial and economic decline. The result of this stay was a beautifully produced coffee table-style book conceived as a symbolic gift to the community. The book was uniquely delivered, free, to the eight thousand households in the Port by the members of the local Boys Football Club. In this way, rather than having a public artwork imposed upon them, the Portonians received a document of their lives and of their participation as both the hosts and protagonists of an artistic experiment. The book is not available anywhere else, commercially or otherwise, in shops or by mail order.

The concept had been to produce and distribute a hardback book of social documentary images, with high-production values, that subverted conventional ways in which such books are disseminated as ‘art’. Neville was fascinated by the way in which the kind of hardback ‘coffee-table’ book of images produced for this project, always ended up on the coffee-tables of the middle class, and not in the homes of those depicted in them. By refusing to sell the book in shops, and by making it uniquely available to Portonians, he was able to intercept and undermine this hierachical, class-based relationship between images and their audience, a relationship that can be viewed as relying on a framework of exploitation. Realising the Port project allowed Neville to examine these questions, and others to do with class, appropriation, the audience, and the context in which social documentary photographs are normally positioned.

The decision to employ the local boys football club to deliver the books had seemed wiser than approaching outside delivery companies ( they all knew the town and its inhabitants already), and conceptually it seemed to fit smoothly into the ethos of feeding both images and funds back into the town. The boys football club delivered all 8000 books in under a week, and without any real problems; the money the club earned paid for both football kit and away games.

The eighty photographs in the book – taken with film cameras and using intricate lighting – range across a variety of photographic styles, bringing together the traditions of social documentary with those of fashion or editorial photography. Collectively they give the impression of something historically indeterminate and suggest that this creative testimony is as much founded in fact as it is a fiction.The rationale behind this was to escape the idea of a unified ‘authentic’ social documentary vision..Neville also employed other devices in order to try to disrupt the notion of a truthful social document, such as employing a fashion designer to make futuristic bonnets for use in some of the photoshoots.

The response to the book by the locals was varied. Many thought that the book was beautiful, an honest reflection of aspects of life in the area, whilst others believed that it showed the community in a negative light, as many of the images were taken in public houses and clubs, and depicted drinking or revelry. In one extreme reaction, the Protestant residents of a street in the Port collectively burned their copies of the book at the back of the local Catholic Club in protest against a perceived pro-Catholic bias in the imagery referencing the respective sides of the secatrian divide. In fact, the balance of images is even.

After the publication of the book, the work was reconfigured into a gallery exhibition which presents the community’s response to the project, including hundreds of letters, e-mails, and newspaper clippings, alongside some of the photographs. This was shown in England at Modern Art Oxford and other venues, and although prints from this exhibition were available for purchase, Neville decided that a considerable proportion of any sales be donated to Port Glasgow based charities. This seemed the only way in which the project and images could visibly enter a debate within the art world, and yet stay true to the ideas of the work. The images now served a purpose of funnelling funds back into the Port, and yet were also balanced in their role as social documentation by co-presenting the responses of that community, both negative and positive, to the very same photographs, and to their contextualisation within a book given uniquely to the town.

The book itself will, however, never be reprinted.

‘The Port Glasgow Book Project was a definite event, which took place in a certain place and time… The important question seems to be; ‘where is the art, exactly, which audience is it meant to speak to, and who owns it?’ Is the art in the quality of the photographs which featured in the book, is it in the book itself as an object, or is it in the contextualisation of the book solely within the Port ?

The work puts equal emphasis on how Neville's images are disseminated, as it does upon their formal quality and content. It attempts to look at issues beyond the frame of the photographic image itself, and how different types and genres of photographic practice align themselves with different demographic boxes.

IN THE PRESS

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, ‘The Photobook: A History Vol.3’, Phaidon, 2014

Katerine Seda, Art Monthly - April 2006

Neville, Mark, 'The Port Glasgow Book Project', Source , Summer 2006

Neville, Mark, 'Three Ways to Make A Book', Witness Number 3, Winter 2007, edited by Martin Parr

Miller, Mitchell, 'Dialect', Drouth, Spring 2006

Lucy Bannerman, The Herald - 29 Nov 2004

Marie Daly, 'The Port Glasgow Book Project', Metro - 11 Dec 2006

Andrew Nairne, 'Local Stories', Modern Art Oxford - Mar-Apr 2006

Sara Stevenson and Duncan Forbes, 'A Companion Guide to Photography in the National Galleries of Scotland', NGS 2009

Duncan McLaren, 'MAP', Summer 2006

Interview, 'The Art Show', BBC Radio Scotland, 4 Nov 2006 (Mp3)

David Campany, 'Deep Surfaces', Dick Intitute text, August 2006

Martin Vincent, 'Frieze', October 2006

2006

Slide installation featuring 50 images ( 24 mins 10 secs)
16mm film, mute, 11 mins 24 secs, looped.
Three handmade banners, 300cm x 75cm each

Exhibited at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow
Supported by the AHRC as part of an Arts and Science Award.
‘Animal Architecture’ is the result of a collaboration between the artist Mark Neville, and scientists from the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences.

Part of the exhibition focused on Neville’s collaboration with Dr. Kathryn Arnold, whose cutting edge research examines how Budgerigars fluoresce ( this is only visible to us under ultraviolet light), and how this fluorescence is used to attract a mate. The idea that sexual attractiveness in the animal world can be quantified scientifically, (and in this case visualised through films and photographs taken under a uv light), seems itself to be a contradiction..Together, Dr. Arnold and Neville extended this contemporary research into fluorescent signalling amongst budgerigars, by making the first ever high-speed (slow motion) film, under ultraviolet light, of  live Budgerigars as they fluoresce and attract one another.

The aim of the collaboration was to make images that address issues relevant to both scientific and artistic investigation, and therefore have value both as ‘forensic’ documentation, but also as  artworks that deal with issues pertaining to representation. 

The second part of the show ( also looking at bird behaviour ), consisted of a dramatic interpretation, in the form of a slide show,  of the bird nest archive at the Biomedical department. Professor Mike Hansell, a leading expert on animal architecture, has established the largest collection of Birds nests anywhere in Britain. As part of Neville’s artwork, some two hundred of these nests were relocated to Camlachie ( formerly known as Barrowfield), a part of the East end of Glasgow that is currently undergoing profound regeneration with assistance from the West of Scotland Housing Association. It is an area synonymous in the past with the most extreme rival gang warfare..Today, however, many of the council housing estates in the area are about to be demolished, the families having been moved out and rehoused to superior accomodation elsewhere. What is left are empty living spaces that still have an echo of their previous inhabitants, through the wallpaper, abandoned toys, and discarded cds. 

The abandoned bird nests that constitute the collection at the university seem to be metaphors for these spaces in Camlachie, and by relocating the nests to these empty houses, and photographing them in different configurations and arrangements in these actual spaces, Neville made a  visually dramatic statement that  comments both on the role of ‘the archive’, and on gentrification.

The slides themselves were later made available at two different locations only; the Biomedical Department of Glasgow University ( where they are being used by students interested in examining bird behaviour and animal architecture ), and a local community centre in Glasgow’s east end, where the same slides serve a totally different purpose ( as a social document of housing in the area, and a nostalgic function for local residents who have since been rehoused ).

The third and final element of the show consisted of three large banners depicting scenes taken from Hieronymous Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’. The banners were made by local seamstresses, entirely from discarded fabric, bath mats, and old clothes which the artist found in and around Parkhead Football stadium.

The work investigates how different types and genres of photographic practice align themselves with different demographic boxes.

IN THE PRESS

'Animal Architecture' Hunterian Museum - 10 Apr 2006

Leon McDermott, 'Animal Architecture' Metro - 02 May 2006

2006

16mm film, mute, 10 mins 15 secs, looped.

Commissioned by Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. 

Exhibited at Kunsthalle Bern, 2006, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, 2007, and Kunstmuseum Bern, 2008

(Made in collaboration with Pavel Buchler)

A moth circles a bright lamp in this unedited, looped film. It was filmed at four thousand frames a second using a camera normally employed in car-crash testing, in a specially constructed interior.

The film is projected onto a hanging frame, with the 16mm projector also clearly visible in the exhibition space. The lamp depicted in the filmed image slowly becomes a metaphor for the bulb within the projector, and the moth circling that light source thus becomes a symbol for the celluloid passing in front of that projector bulb.

IN THE PRESS

Rachel Withers, Kunsthalle Bern, 'Artforum' - Dec 2006

'Map' - Winter 2006

1995-2006

Three, 16mm films, each looped, presented simultaneously as an installation. Duration ; 5 mins, 4mins 10 secs, 7mins 5 secs

One of ‘The Jump Films’ was presented on its own as part of the exhibition ‘A Century of Artist’s Film in Britain’ curated by David Curtis at Tate Britain, 2004.

‘The Jump Films’ Installation was shown for the first time in its complete form at Street Level Gallery, 2006, during Glasgow International. In 2009 the work was shown at the Dean Gallery as part of the exhibition ‘Running Time: Artists’ Film in Scotland 1960 til Now’ and in 2010 the full installation was exhibited in HD format at the Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland.

During exhibitions these three films are screened simultaneously on separate projectors, as loops, in one space. Each film documents a jump, or a fall, shot at thousands of frames per second, and was made using a high-speed film camera that is normally used in scientific research or car-crash testing. The premis was to scientifically document an event that could not be quantified in scientific terms, and to investigate a mythology associated with ‘heroic’ male performance artists such as Bas Yan Ader, Yves Klein, and others. So Neville performed all of the jumps himself. Each film is shot at different speeds, in different locations, to give a contradictory notion of jumping, or falling. One film seems to document an abortive suicide attempt, another a stunt from a Hollywood movie, and the third seems to present jumping as an absurd Olympic event. In this way, a metaphorical reading is given to the idea of a jump, or fall.

The work explores how our experience of performance art history from the 1960s and 1970s is mostly confined to grainy, still images taken from films or videos, in art history books. This format is echoed in that of the high-speed films, which seem to reduce every event to a series of grainy photographic stills that only change incrementally, and that make this connection between film, and still images seen in art history books, more explicit. Thus, ‘The Jump Films’ also make comment on the way in which early performance art films and photographs existed only as a perfunctory document of an action that was itself  the intended artwork. ( As opposed to these performance art films that explore the nature of film as the artwork).

IN THE PRESS

Nicoll, Janie, 'The Jump Films', Artists Newsletter, July 2006

Susan Mansfield, 'Glasgow International', The Scotsman - 10 May 2006

'The Jump Films' The Herald - 09 May 2006

'A Century of Artists' Film in Britain' TATE Britain - 2004

David Campany, 'Deep Surfaces', August 2006

2004

16mm film, 7 mins 30 secs, looped, with soundtrack

This slow-motion film was made in Port Glasgow with the co-operation of a local school. It records a sports day, and couples it with the soundtrack from ‘Kes’, the 1969 film by Ken Loach ( a film that also features an emotional scene on a sports field). The footage seems historically vague, as if it could have been shot at any time over the past forty years, an impression further re-enforced through association with ‘Kes’  The work implies that conditions amongst working communities have not changed in four decades. The use of high-speed cinematography and sentimental music also suggests that social documentary techniques can only hope to aestheticise their subject matter.

2006

16mm film, mute, 12 minutes, looped

Commissioned by Tramway, Glasgow, for the exhibition ‘What Makes You and I Different’

The film documents the artist walking through ‘Fergusons’ shipyard in Port Glasgow, where Stanley Spencer was resident during the second world war. It is made with a high-speed film camera, which adopts the point of view of a disembodied eye floating above the shipyard warehouse. As the camera tracks the work floor from on high, all sense of scale is lost,  and the space seems alternately transformed into a small maquette,a British abstract painting, or a Ben Nicholson relief.

2006

16mm film, mute,  4 minutes, looped.

Commissioned by Tramway, Glasgow, for the exhibition ‘What Makes You and I Different’

The title and content of this film recalls a photograph by Bas Jan Ader, an image which was dependant on the artifice and melodrama of the artist’s act of placing himself before the camera while crying. Filmed in ultra slow motion, in extreme close-up, the work simultaneously makes reference to Surrealist representations of the eye.

2005

16mm film, mute, 3mins 11 secs, looped

This work employs a four by three metre backdrop made from wood, string, and cloth, emulating the one used by Muybridge in his well-known photographic series.

Passers-by and shoppers who chanced past the frame, which was erected opposite an alley way at the back of the artist's studio in Glasgow, were filmed using a high-speed (slow motion) film camera.
The resulting images create a tension between the constructed artifice of the ‘Muybridge’ backdrop, and the unrehearsed action of casual pedestrians who, barely aware of the frame, react only to the camera upon the moment they are in front of it. A dialogue is established with the original Muybridge series, with both works using state of the art ( for their day) motion analysis equipment.

1999

laser, mirror, slow-turning motor

Exhibited in ‘Speed of LIght, Speed of Sound’ at the Nederlands Design Institute, 1996, Acquired by the Flemish Community in 1999

A small, constantly rotating mirror, deflects a laser beam dot around the walls, floor and ceiling of the room, as if marking an invisible plane which intersects the architectural space. Although we know that it is travelling at a constant, its movement seems to gradually slow or quicken depending on the relative distance from its source. When ascending the wall nearest the Iaser mechanism. the point of light seems to creep slowly up its surface, its speed apparently increasing when it approaches the far side of the room, as it covers a greater space in the same period of time. The work takes two minutes to complete one cycle.