CHRIS MARSHALL 

After graduating from Manchester College of Art & Design in 1968, Chris Marshall moved to London where he became involved in experimental and radical art platforms, showing in alternative spaces and becoming part of the environmental art movement.

The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm provided an important focus, where he created an event for BBC Television in 1968. Further events were initiated in many locations in London and the south-east, including ‘Iceberg’ (1970), a massive inflatable sculpture floated on St Katherine’s Dock, and an event with aerial sculptures in support of the student protests at Guildford School of Art (1968).

Working at APT since the earliest days his practice is as inventive and radical as ever, frequently employing unorthodox materials, substances, and stuff. In 2007 he installed a permanently sited sculpture for University Hospital Lewisham, ‘Blue Well’, fabricated from 3.5 tons of hand cast glass. In 2003, he incorporated 5000 used cigarette ends in a lightwork for Deptford X Festival, and in 2011 live duckweed was used to construct an installation.

Whether it is produced for a gallery exhibition or as a private or public commission the work is always site-specific, that is, meticulously researched and founded in the place in which it materializes. The outcome is often large, expanding into the visual space to become the dominant presence. There is a focus on the substantial qualities of the materials used, manipulating, accentuating and transforming them into new realities. Of equal importance is the way these material values interact with their environment. Ambient characteristics – light, colour, reflections draw attention to the temporal aspect of the work, softening an often heroic nature.

‘The fugitive, the evanescent, the diaphanous, are also elements that lead towards the sublime’ (CM 2016)

During Lockdown 2020, for three months or more Chris Marshall worked almost exclusively at home, intervening in his home environment with the same relish as ever. Severely restricted in his movement outdoors one response has been Landscape with flowers, a dark terrain of tangled fabric, a scorched land littered with hidden stumps of unknown origin and the bright stamens of wilting flowers.

Intrusion uses the same black packing material as an almost living entity, squeezing itself into corners, wedged between wall and door, climbing the walls - transforming a bodily desire into an optical reality.

There is a wry sense of humour in Marshall’s work. alongside grandeur there is often pathos and our response to the sublime may be to laugh. Two recent short films from this period - Wheeze, 2020 and Cuckoo,2020 - have the same, slight claustrophobia of his home installations and yet a poetic wit. In Cuckoo, a man with a small glass phial protruding from his nose listens to the sound of a cuckoo and the buzzing of tiny insects. There is a slight echo and it is not clear whether the call is internal or external.

LINKS

chrismarshallsculpture.co.uk

Chris Marshall > Instagram

Cardinals, gardens, fishtails and a mermaid: Chris Marshall & George Percy
ArtRabbit, 2016