Indie Spotlight: Mark Ward
HUCK meets the artist with an affection for nostalgia and the Americana dreamland.
More like this...
"I'm trying to make sense of that world I saw as a kid, and still wish it did exist. It does exit, but just in my head,” laughs artist Mark Ward from his small studio in Forest Hill, south east London.
Ward is a man obsessed with a make-believe world. As a child of the late 1980s, he was heavily influenced by the day-glo representations of exotic Americana that his TV beamed into his home in the London suburbs. It was something that set his imagination loose, daydreaming of the idyllic Californian lifestyle against the drab UK surroundings.
"Before, I was looking at America in a very distorted way, like everything was amazing,” says the 30-year-old artist of his work. “When we were growing up before internet, you'd just used to get snippets of stuff, like American football and burgers, so I'm trying to glue those fragments back together and make it into some some people will recognise.”
The fruits of this quest are strewn around the studio. Alongside his influence of cheap McDonalds toys and basketball hoops, there are his handpainted pictures on paper and stainless steel as well as sculptures and even an old 1980s CRT television to display an animation, all set to be shown at his As Seen on TV show at Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch in August 2011.
The uniting theme is his beloved symbols Americana, things like sweet wrapper, rocket lollies, Varsity symbols and basketball team logos all fused together to make some twisted commentary on their own illusion. “I'm taking classic Amercinana and putting a message in it so people can read a story from it,” he explains. “Re-appropriating all the things people know about America.”
At first glance, the crisp iconography seems printed, but they are in fact the result of painstaking handpainting with aerosol and indian ink. “I try to get that element of perfection across as that's the way its presented to me. But if you look closely, you realise it's not perfect,” he explains. “But if you can tell me anyone who prints this, it'll save me a shit load of time!”
Hand-painted onto sheet metal
An owl made from symbols of Americana
Ward's path to success first started at school. “I was the arty kid, it sounds big headed but I knew I was alright at art,” he says. “I thought I wanted to be a graphic designer so I put typography in the back of the still lifes we had to paint – and [the teachers] were like 'it's pop art!'. They showed me a book on Keith Haring and I loved it. It gave me a reason to paint what I wanted to paint.”
What followed was a degree in advertising at St Martin's College in central London to get a “proper job” as an art director. But after six months of working at advertising giant Ogilvy on briefs for such things as Barbie, he quit for the life of a struggling freelancer. First up he boldly pestered the Stussy store to let him redesign their shop posters until they let him and nearly 10 years later, he now boasts having done work for the likes of Nike, Burton and Blueprint Skateboards and by his own admission is “doing alright”.
Alongside art, Ward is also passionate about skateboarding and as part of his upcoming exhibition, he's just been given his own guest board on Blueprint – something that is pretty much every skateboarders dream. Laughs Ward: “I've managed to get my name on a skateboard and I haven't had to break my legs to do it!”
Lightbox sketches
A Jesus Michael Jordan overlooks all that happens
Sketch plans for a lightbulb sculpture
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £20 (UK) / £43 (EU) / £58 (Rest of the World).
Indie Spotlight: Mark Ward (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Add Your Comment...
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.