© 2011 Mark Masters

As a student of British Artist David Ferry, I was influenced by Piranesi, Hayter and Sutherland. I work within the field of mixed media and fotographic collage.

 

My work contains a sense of 'time base' and narrative, reproduced as video, print or artist's book. Recent works have examined England as a culture and a heritage, in what I describe as existing only within the 'intangible cinema'- something we want to believe in and hold true, but can never really exist. The juxtaposition of image and ephemera make metaphor the huge forms and ominous machines that scale our once 'beautiful land' and question our own sense of vision and reality.

 

Engine and propeller become 'unexpected monuments' in the landscape, turbine becomes shell on the beach or dark form, images from Ladybird Well Loved Tales become nightmare set against the industrial relics of a forgotten England- Spitfire becomes monument to a distant land as it rusts in the sea off the pier, as children stuff vinegared chips into their mouths from a polystyrene dish and wooden fork.

 

What is it to be British and part of this small island? Why do we walk the pier on a Sunday, only to reach its end, turn round and come back? In a year that has seen a diamond jubilee, I ask where the boundaries of patriotism lay. Would we fight now for our beloved 'England' or pull our 'hoodie' up over our head and slouch off to Poundland. Has the British Empire been reduced to a one off street party- a flat beer served up in a union jack paper cup?

 

My collages are angry, ridiculous, amusing, controversial, intelligent and poignant.

 

A few years ago, young men would scramble to a Spitfire to fight a most unjust enemy. Today they hang a flag from the balcony in a rebuke to their country.... a new enemy ....their own lack of vision. From those distant days as a young boy when I would cry, ''I can see the sea'' as we neared our holiday destination, to observer and visual recorder at age 46, what still fascinates me is the timeless fashion in which generation after generation have walked along the English seaside 'front' and have done as I have done- and long after I have departed this Mortal Coil, will continue to do so, in an absolute unconscious pursuit and pleasure to find in themselves and remain inherently British.

 

Mark