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Marc Atkins

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Marc Atkins
Marc Atkins

Marc Atkins (born 1962) is an English artist. His practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography, video and prose poetry. His work is held in collections including Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, London.[1][2] His publications include The Teratologists, Thirteen, Warszawa, Faces of Mathematics and The Logic of the Stairwell.

Life and education

[edit]

Atkins attended Stafford College of Art and Design, where he gained a distinction, and Cheltenham School of Art, where he received a first class honours degree in sculpture. He undertook postgraduate studies at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands, in performance, video, film and photography.[3]

He later moved to Rome, returning to London in 1991. From 1993 to 1994, he was assistant professor at the University of Windsor, Canada.[4]

Artistic practice

[edit]

Atkins' artistic practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography, video and prose poetry.[3] In 1999, he was the subject of a portfolio in HotShoe International, with an essay by Mark Durden on his work. Durden wrote that Atkins' work was concerned with "the margins" and described Atkins' vision of London as "crepuscular".[5]

Atkins' photographic publications include The Teratologists, Thirteen, Warszawa and Faces of Mathematics. In an essay on Warszawa in The Liberal, Rod Mengham discussed Atkins' Warsaw photographs in relation to urban memory, architecture and postwar space.[6]

Mengham also wrote on Atkins' series Equivalents in the journal Performance Research, discussing the photographs in relation to permanence, disappearance, point of view and the instability of the photographic image.[7]

Atkins has also worked in performance, video and installation. A 1997 profile in Entropy characterised Atkins' photography and performance as closely connected parts of his practice, discussing his work in relation to place, urban space, the darkroom and the staged image.[8] In 1992, Atkins participated in a programme of British performance art at De Melkfabriek in Den Bosch, alongside artists including Brian Catling, Nigel Slight, Helena Goldwater, Monica Ross and Tara Babel.[9]

Image and text collaborations

[edit]

Atkins' image and text collaborations include projects with the writers Iain Sinclair and Rod Mengham. His photographs appeared in Sinclair's Lights Out for the Territory (1997), a book on London walking, memory and urban history. Reviewing the book in The Times, Peter Ackroyd wrote that "the mysterious photographs of Marc Atkins complete the process".[10]

Atkins and Sinclair later published Liquid City (1999), a book combining Atkins' photographs with Sinclair's writing. Reviewing the book in The Observer, Stephanie Merritt wrote that it "reverses the balance" of the earlier partnership by "foregrounding Atkins's photographs".[11]

In The Times Literary Supplement, Anthony Rudolf wrote that the photographs in Liquid City could stand on their own without the text, while also describing the work of Atkins and Sinclair as an interaction between two "great jazz soloists".[12]

Atkins' image and text practice has also been discussed in relation to poetry and photography. Drew Milne's essay "Corners of the Eye: Collaborations in Contemporary Poetry and Photography", published in Works on Paper in 2002, discussed Atkins' work with Sinclair and Rod Mengham within wider image and text practices.[13]

The collaboration was also discussed in architectural criticism. In AA Files, William Firebrace reviewed Liquid City alongside Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Space, considering both works in relation to London, authorship and urban representation.[14]

Writing

[edit]

Atkins has published three collections of prose and poetry: The Prism Walls, The Logic of the Stairwell and Silent Street.[15][16][17]

Reception

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Critical discussion of Atkins' work has addressed his photography, writing and image and text collaborations. In a review of Liquid City for Blueprint, Joe Kerr described the book as "a work of collaboration" and wrote that Atkins' photographs captured "an essence of London".[18]

Reviewing a 2000 exhibition at the Foundry in The Guardian, Jonathan Jones described Atkins as "a dark-edged photographer of London's hidden places, secret histories and sinister 'characters'", and wrote that his photography captured "an urban state of mind".[19]

Reviewing The Logic of the Stairwell in The Warwick Review, Barbara Bridger wrote about Atkins' "accumulating images" and compared his atmosphere of place to Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.[20]

Reviewing the South Bank Photo Show at the Royal Festival Hall in Time Out London, Sarah Kent described Atkins' contribution as a "Beckett-like scenario" and "a neatly conceived tautology".[21]

Stephen Gardiner reviewed Liquid City in The London Magazine, noting the importance of Atkins' photographs within the work.[22]

In The Kenyon Review, Rod Mengham discussed Atkins' photographs in relation to Liquid City and Lights Out for the Territory, describing the books as "companion pieces".[23]

In The Village Voice, Simon Reynolds described Liquid City as "an easier entry point" than Lights Out for the Territory, writing that its text "takes a back seat to the photography of Marc Atkins". Reynolds described the "lustrous darkness" of Atkins' high contrast black and white photographs as bringing out the book's "articulate shadows" and "the hauntedness of urban space".[24]

In 2015, Ars Poetica published Several Views of the Multilayeredness of British Artist Marc Atkins, a series of essays on Atkins edited by Michel Delville.[25]

The French journal Le Passant Ordinaire published "The Journey to an Empty Room", an article on Atkins' work.[26]

Collections

[edit]

Several of Atkins' works are in the Tate collection.[1] The National Portrait Gallery, London holds 11 photographic portraits by Atkins.[2]

Selected publications

[edit]
  • The Prism Walls. Contraband Books. ISBN 978-1-91031-901-7.[15]
  • Still Moving, photography with poetry by Rod Mengham (Veer Books ISBN 978-1-907088-64-3)
  • The Logic of the Stairwell, prose and poetry (Shearsman Books ISBN 978-1-84861-161-0)
  • Silent Street, prose poetry (Shearsman Books ISBN 978-1-84861-570-0)[17]
  • The Teratologists, photography (panoptika ISBN 0-9534371-0-8)
  • Liquid City, photography with text by Iain Sinclair (Reaktion Books ISBN 1-86189-037-0)[27]
  • Thirteen, photography with text by thirteen writers, including Julian Rathbone, Bill Drummond, James Sallis, Mick Farren, Stella Duffy and Nicholas Royle (The Do-Not Press ISBN 1-899344-86-1)
  • Warszawa, photography with poetry by Tadeusz Pióro and Andrzej Sosnowski (WIG Press ISBN 83-87014-99-0).[28]
  • The World's Top Photographers: Nudes, also includes the work of Guy Bourdin, Bettina Rheims, Robert Mapplethorpe and Rankin (RotoVision ISBN 2-88046-823-X)
  • The Nude, also includes the work of Bill Brandt and Ralph Gibson (RotoVision ISBN 2-88046-533-8)
  • Faces of Mathematics, solo photography with introductions by Nick Gilbert, and also with text by the participants, including Michael Atiyah (panoptika ISBN 0-9534371-1-6)

Selected exhibitions

[edit]
  • 2018: Equivocal Form, Ambiguous Function: Drawings and Photo-Drawings, Velorose, London.[29]
  • 2001: The Teratologists, Standpoint Gallery, London.[31]
  • 2001: Atopos, former Poznański textile factory, Łódź, Poland.[32]
  • 2000: Marc Atkins, Foundry, London.[19]
  • 1999: Liquid City, 291 Gallery, London.[33]
  • 1994: Footfalls Echo in the Memory, 450 Broadway Gallery, New York City.[34]
  • 1992: South Bank Photo Show, Royal Festival Hall, London.[21]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 "Marc Atkins". Tate.
  2. 1 2 "Marc Atkins". National Portrait Gallery.
  3. 1 2 "Art education". marcatkins.com. Archived from the original on 14 May 2014.
  4. ↑ Marc Atkins: Interstice (Exhibition leaflet). Prague: British Council. 2002. From 1993–94 he was assistant professor at the University of Windsor, Canada.
  5. ↑ Durden, Mark (September–October 1999). "Marc Atkins". HotShoe International.
  6. ↑ Mengham, Rod. "Warsaw, by Marc Atkins". The Liberal: 67.
  7. ↑ Mengham, Rod (2002). "Intervention 3: Fleeing the Light". Performance Research. 7 (2): 66–68.
  8. ↑ Evans, Gareth (1997). "Marc Atkins in profile". Entropy. Vol. 1, no. 1. pp. 34–37.
  9. ↑ Van Peer, René (28 August 1992). "Zes Britse performances in De Melkfabriek Den Bosch". Brabants Dagblad.
  10. ↑ Ackroyd, Peter (9 January 1997). "Behold now this vast city of refuge". The Times. p. 36.
  11. ↑ Merritt, Stephanie (27 June 1999). "Paperbacks, picturebooks, audio, classics... your shorthand guide to the literary week". The Observer Review. p. 14.
  12. ↑ Rudolf, Anthony (1999). "Geography". The Times Literary Supplement.
  13. ↑ Milne, Drew (2002). "Corners of the Eye: Collaborations in Contemporary Poetry and Photography". In Slater, Helen; Mansell, Thomas (eds.). Works on Paper: An Anthology of Contemporary Texts and Images. Cambridge and London: Aitches Press. pp. 123–127.
  14. ↑ Firebrace, William (1999). "Review of Robinson in Space and Liquid City". AA Files (39).
  15. 1 2 "The Prism Walls". Contraband Books.
  16. ↑ "The Logic of the Stairwell". Shearsman Books.
  17. 1 2 Ian Seed (2018). "Silent Street, Marc Atkins". Stride Magazine.
  18. ↑ Kerr, Joe (June 1999). "London: a story in words and pictures". Blueprint. p. 63.
  19. 1 2 Jones, Jonathan (2 March 2000). "Marc Atkins". Exhibitions. The Guardian.
  20. ↑ Bridger, Barbara (2012). "Review of On the Side of the Crow, The Logic of the Stairwell, Clair Obscur". The Warwick Review.
  21. 1 2 Kent, Sarah (1992). "South Bank Photo Show". Time Out London.
  22. ↑ Gardiner, Stephen (December 1999 – January 2000). "Liquid City". The London Magazine.
  23. ↑ Mengham, Rod (2001). "The Elegiac Imperative". The Kenyon Review. 23 (1): 173–177. JSTOR 4338184.
  24. ↑ Reynolds, Simon (17 August 1999). "Down and Out in London". The Village Voice. Retrieved 25 June 2026.
  25. ↑ Michel Delville, ed. (2015). "Several Views of the Multilayeredness of British Artist Marc Atkins". Ars Poetica.
  26. ↑ "The Journey to an Empty Room". Le Passant Ordinaire. Archived from the original on 15 May 2008. Retrieved 6 July 2008.
  27. ↑ "Liquid City". The Complete Review.
  28. ↑ Atkins, Marc (2005). Warszawa. Warsaw: WIG Press. ISBN 83-87014-99-0.
  29. ↑ "Marc Atkins, Equivocal Form, Ambiguous Function: Drawings and Photo-Drawings". Velorose. 2018. Retrieved 26 June 2026.
  30. ↑ "Marc Atkins: rencontre aux frontières des genres, rétrospective". Université de Liège. 2015.
  31. ↑ "Last Chance". Art Review. July–August 2001. p. 26.
  32. ↑ "Artyści poszukujący w starej tkalni". Kultura. Dziennik Łódzki (in Polish). 27 June 2001.
  33. ↑ "What's on". Space. The Guardian. 13 May 1999. p. 3.
  34. ↑ Winter New York. Anet van den Elzen. 1996.
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