About

British artist Mark McGowan, aka The Artist Taxi Driver, is a lecturer and street artist whose socially engaged, often irreverent work delivers instant impact through accessibility and unpretentious narratives. With a background in performance and interactive installation, his decades-long body of work has been described as absurd, shock-art, and political activism.

For his installation at the Kabinett, McGowan explores the question “what’s gonna to happen to all my stuff when I die?”, a question posed to him during a conversation with his mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. Accompanying the progressive decline in cognisance is a simultaneous mourning of memory, and the objects that represent it.

The installation and corresponding poetry performance examines a collection of her possessions that, while perhaps not conventionally valuable, are treasured by their owner. How does memory influence the perception of value and the anxiety that accompanies the cycle of life and death?

A ten-hour durational performance comprises a collection of poems and photo installation on the interior shelf of the Kabinett; a series of black and white photographs depicting the owner’s cherished belongings referenced in the prose. The performance was live-streamed to YouTube and Instagram, and an excerpt was installed on the exterior wall of the Kabinett.

McGowan’s performance, though time-based, leaves its trace on the Kabinett through remnants that illicit intrigue and ambiguity to passersby. These fragments represent the memories themselves, and exemplify that the art is not found within the artefacts, but rather in what happens during the creative process of production. Making and performing is the creative act, while artefacts are merely what is left over after the art of creation withdraws: just as the belongings themselves serve the life and spirit of their proprietors.

8 -22 marCH, 2024