Mark Pawson and possessions
Posted by Sonja
April 12, 2008
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Last week I went to a private view of Mr Mark Pawson’s new exhibition at the Horse Hospital, one of London’s best venues, and miraculously still little known. A bit like Mark himself – one of our best visual conjurers, but miraculously still little known. He probably likes it like that.
He prints his own signs, badges and postcards. He collects things, mostly plastic figures, and always completes the set. He works in bright colours. He is the coal miner of culture.
I invited my friend Katie, who recently had all her possessions stolen and destroyed in a lock-up break-in. As we entered the exhibition, and I saw what a feast of objects Mark had assembled, I had some misgivings about bringing Katie. She saw one of his signs, that said something about listening to all the unplayed records you’ve ever bought, and reading all the unread books, and had “a moment”.
But we stayed and looked at his full set of plastic Kinder polar bears, and read his ‘cultural workers’ manifesto, and Katie seemed stoical about her losses. I may buy her a set of his badges, to set her back off down the road to ownership.
1 comment Categories: adventure, art, design, london
April 13th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Ooh I’ve been meaning to go to this exhibition. Mark Pawson is great!
All her possessions? Oh my, I can’t imagine how that must feel. So much of people’s identities these days seems tied up with possessions, which isn’t necessarily a good thing but there you go.