About

Statement

Working within the realm of abstract and expanded format painting, I'm preoccupied with the definition of landscape and it's connection to abstract painting. I'm influenced by abstract expressionism, Constructivism, colour field painting, and post-abstraction - in all forms.

I believe that to think of landscape as something purely external is wrong. It is a region of space that make up both our inward and outward worlds: mutable landscapes with indivisible boundaries exerting invisible influences as our connection to our environment. We inhabit it, and it dwells within us.

Paintings and landscapes both change over time; they get reworked and over-painted and form layers of lost space. They are transient space. The past gets obscured, the surface takes priority and is processed via the serial influence of the preceding layers. The process is a way of processing the duality of these spaces.


Current Research

I'm currently working on multiple series' of paintings as well as a project that combines landscape interventions with old photographs. The content of these photos is an emotional landscape arranged within a contrasting exterior landscape. The aim is to highlight a separation between the past and present as two separate spaces, much like a collage, in order to uncover new signifiers. I hope that the work triggers a more general conversation about our connection to these spaces and the slippages between them.

In addition to this I am researching the nature of conformity and ways in which the rejection of conformity and the impact of social dilemmas are expressed in abstract painting, particularly from Japan.

CV

Group Exhibitions

2023 - Art Diagonale, Austria

2019 - Stages of Life, Harrow Arts Centre, London

2018 - Somewhere in Time II, C. Y. Tung Maritime Museum, Shanghai

2018 - Somewhere in Time I, West Bund, Shanghai

2018 - MFA Graduate Show, Wimbledon College of Arts

2017 - Otherworlds 1, 5th Base Gallery, Brick Lane, London

2017 - One That Holds Everything, Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras Church, London

2017 - 17m2, UAL High Holborn, London

2017 - Life in a Shoebox, Back Room Gallery, London

2017 - Mixed Relationships, China Design Centre, London

2015 - Looking Sound, live visual arts & music performance, London

2014 - ACME Open Studios, Robinson Road, London

2012 - The Big Event, Stoke Newington Library Gallery, London

2010 - Harvest Moon, The Troubadour, Earls Court, London

Residencies

July-August 2023 - Art Diagonale V, Austria

December 2018 – ICCI Art Valley Residency, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Curatorial

2016 - 2019 - Organiser / Curator,  Window71 - exhibition space in a disused ground floor window, north London, UK

Education

2016-2018 - MFA Fine Art, University of the Arts London
(Wimbledon College of Art. Grade: Distinction)

2000-2003 - BA (Hons) Fine Art, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, Banbury
(De Montfort University)

1999-2000 - Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, College of West Anglia

Awards

University of the Arts London Vice Chancellor's Scholarship

 

Work held in private collections in the UK, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Austria.

Mark Jeffreys (b. UK 1981) currently lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  His MFA is from University of the Arts in London.

Get in touch using the contact form opposite.