Marc Medland - Artist
2 Heron Mews, La Petite Rue du Val Plaisant, St. Helier, Jersey, JE2 4YA
www.marcmedland.co.uk/artistmarc_medland@yahoo.co.ukAbout
I am an architect and illustrator working in Jersey. My degree in architecture in Birmingham was followed by studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture, under the headship of Archigram founder, Peter Cook. More recently, I have undertaken short courses in Experimental Printmaking and Art Direction for Film at Central Saint Martins.
The projects shown here demonstrate my invented parallel worlds. These are set in extreme situations such as crumbling downtown New York; deserts in Mexico; verges and central reservations of Dutch motorways, a rocky beach in Aran; the Fisher Ridge Cave System near Cave City, Kentucky; or trailer parks in Los Angeles.
The characters are colonists who occupy and inhabit these places by means of my architectural schemes, which encourage them to participate in the creation of their own dwellings. The cast includes social climbing Ed & Nancy living on the streets of New York in their adapted Japanese hatchback (also called Ed & Nancy) and preyed on by The Scream Crusher; a C21st Orestes heroically fighting the self destruction of his own house, the unnamed penitent hermit living on a remote beach in Aran and who operates a baptistery launderette made of fish skin and washing machine carcases; doomed South American industrialists in their ill-fated flying machines; Frank, the axe-wielding murderer and caretaker of the Hacked to Death II morgue/crematorium complex on New York’s Roosevelt Island; and a group of outcast monks inhabiting a series of parasitic buildings attached to host structures in East London.
These characters are caricatures that inhabit a world reminiscent of the fairy story, as in the tradition of Grimm. The stories are dark and extreme. The characters are placed under the microscope and their characteristics magnified to a compulsive, repulsive or obsessive state.
The projects are illustrated using architectural drawing, synthesised with collage and photomontage. Also shown are physical models made from found natural and man-made objects (from Airfix kits to scavenged car parts). The use of plastic, artificial colour and stylised drawing as opposed to naturalistic representation enforces the idea that these places and people belong to the world of dreams…or nightmares.Categories: Artist.
