About
I am enticed by fleeting moments of intrigue, a shift in shadows, and the fissures within the certainties of location.
Marc Atkins is an English artist working in lens based media (photography and video), drawing, painting, sculpture, and text.
Solo exhibitions include Equivocal Form, Ambiguous Function at The Grey Gallery and Velorose, a retrospective at Galerie Wittert, Université de Liège, and exhibitions at the British Council, Standpoint Gallery, 291 Gallery and 450 Broadway Gallery, New York. His work was included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2019.
Atkins has presented his work and ideas on the image at institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts, UEL School of Architecture, the Royal College of Art, Instytut Mikołówski, NYU Paris, The Photographers’ Gallery, Université de Liège and CRASSH at the University of Cambridge.
His images have been acquired for public and private collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, Tate, London and the University of Cambridge.
Books include The Logic of the Stairwell, The Prism Walls, Silent Street, The Teratologists, Faces of Mathematics and Warszawa. Explore publications.
Atkins lived and worked for many years in London and has also spent extended periods in Rome, Detroit, New York, Warsaw and Paris. He now lives and works in Bridport, Dorset.
Artist statement
Fundamentally my work is about a journey. Through vast landscapes, entangled roads, and buildings of myriad rooms, I puzzle at the qualities of experience, perceptual misunderstanding, the elegant and desolate, and the disturbing nature of beauty.
My images are of encounters with a curious world, a curtain momentarily blows open and a glance of light exposes the activity of a room, indistinct characters fall from the unlit corners of a street, texts from a forgotten book stream from the page, nebulous structures become distinct sculptural forms, frames of a lost film escape to become their own narrative, a silent performance of lives plays out in hidden settings.
Observations form oblique impressions, casting images which at once begin generating their own stories, seeping out over time into the world. The veil rests closed, the image is held.