Canwood Gallery Artist Series – Mark Houghton

Mark Houghton’s arresting abstract sculptures and paintings quietly demand to occupy the contexts within which they are created for.

Born in Warrington in 1961, Mark trained initially, and gained his first degree at Middlesex University (formerly the Hornsey School of Art) and subsequently at the Cardiff Metropolitan University (MA Fine Art), at the Cardiff School of Art & Design.

His work has long been concerned with our relationship to the built environment, and often incorporates objects and materials encountered there. His practice highlights overlooked aspects of the everyday, in order to isolate and represent aspects of the urban environment. His aim is to forge a visual poetry of the commonplace, to elevate the irrelevance of the ordinary, in an attempt to decode and decipher the complexity of the environments that we inherit and inhabit.

He moved to Welsh Borders in 1987 and has exhibited, in both Wales and the rest of the UK, as well as undertaking several residencies both here, in the UK, and abroad in Spain and the US. His work appears regularly in both group and solo exhibitions. He has recently been collaborating with a painter, Kelly Best, who is based in Cardiff, having joint shows in both Cardiff and Manchester. As well as appearing in catalogues, his work features in a worldwide survey of 30 multi-disciplinary artists, “The Language of Mixed Media Sculpture” by Jac Scott, published by the Crowood Press, May 2014. In the same year he was been elected to the Royal British Society of Sculptors.

Mark has taught Fine Art since 1997 at both Graduate and Under Graduate level, at Hereford College of Arts and Cardiff Metropolitan University, always specializing in Sculpture.

Mark Houghton’s work can be viewed at Canwood Gallery www.canwoodgallery.org
10th – 18th September 2016 11am to 5 pm

Canwood Gallery (CG) is part of Herefordshire art week , they are also exhibiting work by:- Carl Andre, Peter Sellers, Angela Conner, Heather Jansch, Walenty Pytel, Ed Elliott, Carter, Caro Burberry, Simon Meiklejohn, Jonathan Loxley, Dominic Welch, Mark Hougton, Will Carr, Simon Probyn, Ben Esthop, Walter van Straaten,  Angela Holden and Deborah Roberts