Mark Connolly, (b.1991, Ballymena), is an artist, curator, and writer based in London. He is the founder of the curatorial platform Paint Talk, co-founder of Notes On A Painting, an Art History Podcast founded with Olivia Kemp. He has exhibited with Minnie Park Projects, New York, Simchowitz, Los Angeles, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp, Galerie Droste, Berlin, Galerie Wolfsen, Aalborg and James Freeman, London.
“In my work, anthropomorphic, androgynous creatures exist alongside representations of fictive and non fictive characters, ambiguity is woven through isolated incidents and observations. Monsters, Demons, Dragons, Professional Wrestlers, Portraits of Self, Animals in Nature, Dinosaurs on the brink of extinction – each have consistent presence.
The apocalypse is a frequent consideration: the end hangs over most works regardless of the subject at hand. Conflict and embattlement are ongoing and unresolved, the fights are not violent per se, but frozen in time at a potential end point, death blow pending. Parallels are sought and drawn between seemingly opposing and contradictory bodies of work.
I treat the wrestlers as a modern day equivalent for the heroic portrait of the angel or knight who battle satan. The wrestlers, in reality are entertainers touring, from arena to arena, the narrative arcs from the nineties very much dated and somewhat cringe inducing, though on occasion allude to biblical narratives. Their tales preoccupied with death, vengeance, redemption, although boiled down for audiences of all ages.
The animals in nature are guardians, spiritual figure heads, the eyes of the natural world looking back at us. The representation of self amidst ongoing, unfolding painted events, is a means of grounding the work in varying levels of reality, allowing the real and unreal to converse and feed into one another. The portrayal of self is itself an act of broaching vulnerability, not an idealised image of self, but rather, self in a state of undress physically or psychologically. The intention was initially to lean more toward a grotesque vision of self, unflattering and raw.
Historical allegories are reconsidered and strategically alienated from the whole. The fusion of multiple languages is intended to contribute to an overarching uncanniness. Historic symbolism is welded to contemporary philosophical considerations, the paintings seek space without time.”
