Mark Lewis (artist)

Mark Lewis (born 1958) in Hamilton, Ontario is a Canadian artist. Noted for his film installations, Lewis represented Canada at the 2009 Venice Biennale.^[1]

Biography

Lewis attended Harrow College of Art (London) and the Polytechnic of Central London. He started as a photographer and began making film-based installations in the mid‑1990s. He has had solo museum exhibitions at the UBC Fine Arts Museum,Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Hamburger Kunstverein, Musée d’art moderne (Luxembourg), BFI Southbank (London), and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest, Romania). His work is in many collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art New York, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).

Lewis was born in Hamilton, Ontario and now lives and works in London, England.^[2] In the 1980s, he studied with Victor Burgin^[3] and worked with Laura Mulvey which influenced his later approach to cinema and video. Mulvey and Lewis produced the documentary Disgraced Monuments in 1991.^[3] From 1989 to 1997 he lived in Vancouver becoming part of the burgeoning photoconceptualism scene of the Vancouver School.^[4] Much of his work focuses on the technology of film and the different genres which have been developed in over 100 years of film history. His films are often short, precise exercises on particular techniques. However, there is also an underlying social or political thematic in his work, often created by choosing very specific urban or rural locations for his films that have a particular economic or social status.

He is co-editorial director of the publisher Afterall, which produces a journal of contemporary art and a series of books and readers. It is published in London, Antwerp and Seville.

In 2009 he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. The exhibition was curated by Barbara Fischer.

References

1. ^ Artist Mark Lewis will represent Canada at the 2009 Venice Biennale of Visual Art
2. ^ Nancy Tousley, "So Much to See: The Films of Mark Lewis", Canadian Art (Summer 2009): 49
3. ^ ^{a b} Nancy Tousley, "So Much to See: The Films of Mark Lewis", Canadian Art (Summer 2009): 52
4. ^ Nancy Tousley, "So Much to See: The Films of Mark Lewis", Canadian Art (Summer 2009): 52-3

Further reading

• Lewis, Mark and Johanne Lamoureux. Mark Lewis: Public Art, Photographs and Projects. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery, 1994. ISBN 088865300X
• Rush, Michael, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Laura Mulvey and Karen Allen. Mark Lewis. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. ISBN 1846310377
• Tousley, Nancy. "So Much to See: The Films of Mark Lewis." Canadian Art (Summer 2009): 48-61.

External links

• Official website
• Interview with Mark Lewis at www.theartnewspaper.tv

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Name	Lewis, Mark
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Date of birth	1958
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