Mark Doyle

2015

Plaster and Chinese Ink

4 x 25 x 25 cm

Commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and sponsored by Vastint

2019

Glass fibre reinforced concrete

Commissioned by Edinburgh Printmakers for their new premises at Castle Mills, Catalogue Wall was created in reference to the building’s original function as the head offices of the North British Rubber Company (NBRC), which occupied the site from 1857 to 1966.

Using promotional material held in the NBRC archives as reference, each of the 45 panels feature elements associated with the North British Rubber Company and rubber production, from iconic products such as rubber boots and hot-water bottles to clincher tyre tracks and more obscure items like gaskets, tubing, expansion joints, and rubber horseshoes.

The work seeks to show the history associated with the building while linking it to its current use as Edinburgh Printmakers. The footprint made by a boot or the tracks made by bike tyres are examples of printmaking in its simplest form and the idea of the multiple is fundamental to both mass production and the creation of artist’s print editions.

Many of the panels combine positive and negative forms, a reference to the fact that the items produced by the NBRC were made using mould making and casting techniques in which many copies of the same object are produced from an original mould. Similar techniques were used to make the panels but instead of casting soft rubber shapes from hard moulds, rubber moulds were used to cast the concrete panels.

As well as featuring casts of original and reproduced objects, the work also includes a cast of leaves from Hevea brasiliensis (commonly known as the rubber tree), which were kindly donated by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Photography by Alix Mcintosh.

2015

Jesmonite

Febris: The Roman goddess of fever

Forest of Febris was created during an ASCUS Art & Science residency at the Centre of Immunity, Infection and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. Working in response to research carried out by scientists studying the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum), the installation references a number of different aspects of the virus.

The starting point for the piece was a cast sample of some of the paraphernalia used in the laboratories for the study of infected blood. It seeks to suggest the way in which the parasite inhabits, adapts to, and is transferred between different environments, such as the infected red blood cell, the gut of the Anopheles mosquito or the body of its host. Retaining the grid structure of the sampled well trays used in the laboratory, the rows of nodules reference the modified surface of an infected red blood cell. This modification is one of the ways the parasite evades the body’s defences by adhering to the cell lining of organs and blood vessels and avoiding removal by the spleen. The work seeks to create the feeling of a state of flux, the flowing forms suggesting wave-like bouts of fever and the six separate segments allude to a disrupted and divided landscape, a common breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Creating this piece and working with scientists at the Centre of Immunity, Infection and Evolution was a reminder of how diseases like malaria affect a multitude of areas, from the purely biological through to the social, economic and environmental. In many respects the disease has influenced the shape of the geopolitical landscape of the world in which we live.

Forest of Febris was exhibited alongside other work created during the residency at Transmissions, a touring exhibition produced by ASCUS Art & Science and shown at Summerhall (Edinburgh), Tent Gallery (Edinburgh College of Art) and LifeSpace (Dundee).

2014

Cast concrete

Created for the 2014 exhibition No Fixed Abode at Edinburgh Printmakers, Home Is Where the Hot Water Is was inspired by conversations with Big Issue sellers and explores what home means to different people. The installation was accompanied by a piece of interpretive text that gives an insight into some of my thinking when creating the work:

For many home is a sanctuary, a place of warmth and comfort. For others it is an aspiration. For many it is a place to be avoided at all costs.

Reading the contributions by homeless people to the ‘Streetlights’ section of the Big Issue I was reminded of the lament sung by Gil Scott-Heron: ‘it might not be such a bad idea if I never, if I never went home again.’ My piece, Home Is Where the Hot Water Is, borrows from Scott-Heron’s song title, replacing ‘hatred’ with ‘hot water.’ My intention was to explore the notions of what home can mean to us at different stages of our lives. Using found objects synonymous with comfort and domesticity, a hot-water bottle and wall paper, I sought to contrast these innocuous elements with the fabric of the pavement: concrete, a material that is ubiquitous in the urban environment and symbolic of all that is cold and hard about life in a modern city.

If we have somewhere to call home, the way we adorn it denotes our identity just as much as the clothes we wear. The colour scheme, wall coverings and furnishings we live among all play a part in forming our self-image and affirming our places in certain social tribes. The diversity of the embossed wallpaper elements in the piece hints at this notion and aims to suggest that homelessness is an issue for all of society.

I have sought to transform what was once a vessel for physical warmth into a vessel for cold contemplation. Is home really just where the hot water is? A utilitarian space that provides the necessities for getting by? Or is there warmth and love there as well? Or perhaps just trouble?

2018

Jesmonite

2015

Plaster

Created for Edinburgh’s Hidden Door Festival in  2015, Municipal Strata samples cross-sections of Edinburgh’s geography using data sourced from topographical survey maps. 

The installation collages the city’s iconic terrain into undulating linear forms. Its component parts emphasise the contrast between light and shadow and allude to the changing relationship between its location in the heart of Edinburgh’s old town and the surrounding urban environment.

2016

Monoprint

42 x 32cm

2018

Terracotta

This piece formed part of a new body of work produced in spring 2018 as part of a residency at The Edinburgh Academy. Initially working intuitively, the forms gradually came under the influence of the daily news feed played over the radio in my studio in the art department. It was a period when the Syrian Civil War was reaching a new level of carnage. The airwaves buzzed with reports of barrel bombs, gas attacks, boasts of “nice, new and smart” missiles and rumours of undocumented atrocities.

Exhibited at the Hidden Door festival, the body of work collectively named Another Version contrasts the ubiquity of materials such as terracotta and sanitary white glazed ceramic with unfamiliar improvised forms, which allude to both ancient forms of Middle Eastern architecture and the back-yard bombs falling between the minarets.

2016

Photo Lithograph

2018

Glazed ceramic

Comprising 36 pairs of ceramic sunglasses, Ways of Seeing borrows its title from John Berger’s seminal text and was conceived as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the rise of so-called post-truth culture and the notion of the “availability cascade”, a term used to describe collective beliefs that arise from appealingly simple explanations to complex issues. The popularity of such beliefs is spread and reinforced within groups by a desire to conform and can be explained by the illusion of insightfulness.

How we see things has always been a matter of perspective. Our outlooks are never truly objective and are shaded by our personal beliefs, something that can be further distorted by new technology and social media. The choice of ceramic for this work reflects the fragility of truth in such a world and the implications of this fragility for the times in which we live.

Ways of Seeing was created during a residency at The Edinburgh Academy and exhibited as part of Another Version at the Hidden Door Festival (2018).

2014

Screenprint and Photopolymer

60 x 40 cm

Relief Photopolymer Print

20 x 20 cm

2018

Glazed Earthenware

This piece formed part of a new body of work produced in spring 2018 as part of a residency at The Edinburgh Academy. Initially working intuitively, the forms gradually came under the influence of the daily news feed played over the radio in my studio in the art department. It was a period when the Syrian Civil War was reaching a new level of carnage. The airwaves buzzed with reports of barrel bombs, gas attacks, boasts of “nice, new and smart” missiles and rumours of undocumented atrocities.

Exhibited at the Hidden Door festival, the body of work collectively named Another Version contrasts the ubiquity of materials such as terracotta and sanitary white glazed ceramic with unfamiliar improvised forms, which allude to both ancient forms of Middle Eastern architecture and the back-yard bombs falling between the minarets.

2005

Lead

2016

Cast Paper

2012

Steel

12 x 20 x 20 cm

2015

Jesmonite

1 x 13 x 25 cm

2015

Blind embossing

38 x 29 cm

Circuit and Formation were inspired by the ability of microscopic organisms, such as rod-shaped bacilliform bacteria, to communicate with each other via chemical signals. This enables them to coordinate their activities, increasing their chances of overwhelming the host body’s immune system.

Created during a residency at the Centre of Immunity, Infection and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh the pieces were exhibited at Transmissions, a touring exhibition produced by ASCUS Art & Science and shown at Summerhall (Edinburgh), Tent Gallery (Edinburgh College of Art) and LifeSpace (Dundee).

2015

Relief Photopolymer Prints

28 x 28cm

Laser Cut Relief Print

2014

Screenprint

30 x 30cm

nick-e melville and Mark Doyle

2013

30 x 30 cm

Laser cut relief and screenprint

Created in collaboration with poet nick-e melville this project focused on the etymologies of printing terms, such as etch, press and print, as starting points for visual poems. The collaboration culminated in the creation of three mixed-media prints that were exhibited as part of The Written Image exhibition at Edinburgh Printmakers in 2013 and 2014.

nick-e writes:

Mark and I discussed various print processes and devised a long list of terms that I then explored to isolate various semantic units, with which to create visual poems. In the creation of these works I deconstructed the terms by confusing the relations between signifier, signified and the sign itself. To do this I wanted the various meanings to signify something other than their traditional associations. For example: to be eaten in authentic, a pun on etch (negative shape of the word in the print) and echt (authentic), calls into question the authenticity of the print, its process and what the image suggests.

2017

Monoprint and Screenprint

Various Sizes

2016

Monoprint

32 x 42cm

Photo Lithograph

20 x 20 cm

2016

Photo Lithograph

20 x 20 cm

2014

Screenprint

30 x 30 cm

Photo Lithograph

2016

38 x 28cm

2018

Screenprints

2017

Ink on Paper

56 x 40cm

2017

Ink and Gouache on paper

2017

Screenprint and embossing

38 x 48 cm

Created for the exhibition Paper to Gold at Edinburgh Printmakers, Transition seeks to suggest the idea of a journey and transformation. I wanted to make something that would encourage the viewer to go on a visual journey and that would appear to change depending on their proximity to the work. My intention was to simplify and exaggerate each element within the work but still produce a subtle image that would maintain a level of ambiguity between mechanical and handmade mark-making.

The piece combines screenprinting with blind embossing, beginning with a fairly mundane photograph of a woodland scene that was then broken down into three layers composed of unified dot-structures. Once printed and viewed from a distance, these layers combine to create an abstracted image of the original scene. However, as the viewer approaches the work and examines it more closely, other elements become apparent, such as the mechanical dot-structures, the hue produced where colours overlap, the embossed surface texture and the variations of the individual dots. The print seeks to emphasise the journey-like nature of the transformations that occur in our visual awareness while contemplating images.

2019

Watercolour

42 x 29cm