S Mark Gubb
Profit and Self
2022 The State We're In
S Mark Gubb
Medium:
Digital and Printed billboards
Displayed:
UK-wide, January - February 2023
Artwork Description:
Our society and culture increasingly value economic profit and personal advancement above all else; an individualistic and capitalist-driven worldview that can only lead to division and catastrophe. It is no-longer conjecture that businesses conspire to make profit from activities long-since known to be toxic to the world. ‘Profit and self above all else’, on one level, acts as a critical observation of this problem. It could also be taken as a mantra for the American Psycho generation, reading as something of an objectivist tenet.
“We live in a time of real-life Bond villains; super-rich, super-powerful, individuals, living on private islands with enough personal wealth to end all the world’s inequalities, but waking up every day and choosing not to. If that’s not a contemporary equivalent of holding the world to ransom, I’m unsure what is.” – S Mark Gubb
Artist's Comment:
We live in a time of real-life Bond villains.
Bio:
S Mark Gubb works across a range of media incorporating sculpture, video, sound, installation and performance. The subjects for his work are as diverse as his approach to media and reflect his ongoing interest in the role that popular culture and oral histories play in the development of an individual’s worldview. This often takes the form of a re-evaluation and re-interpretation of contemporary culture and history, provoking us to consider our contribution to the world we live in.
His work has been widely commissioned and exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including permanent public works in a range of cities around the UK. S Mark Gubb lives and works in Cardiff, Wales.
Curator's Comment:
A vibrant epitaph for our virulent species.
