Mark Jenkins, BRD SHT

About

The upcoming exhibition, BRD SHT, is an extension of Project84 – which raised awareness for the 84 men that commit suicide every month in the UK.  The project was in collaboration with CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and follows the artist’s recent installation on top of London’s ITV building this Spring. The title for the show is taken from a number plate in the 1970 film, Brewster McCloud, and references the fact that humans carry emotional baggage that weigh us down – unlike birds who constantly release their droppings to allow effortless flight.

Jenkins, along with his partner and co-collaborator, Sandra Fernandez, creates sculptural street installations that take the form of life-sized bodies, often interacting with the surrounding environment. The physical casting process ordinarily uses either Mark or Sandra’s own bodies, essentially cloning themselves over and over in a very personal exercise before integrating the dark humoured and often sinister sculptures within an unassuming public space. The work is intended to explore the conventional process in which we experience and view artwork and the pedestrian boundaries between art and life.

“The intention is to show suicide as the failure of flight; death, not as a choice, but as the consequence of exhaustion. And for me a personal reminder. It was the fate of Brewster McCloud and unfortunately a million people each year.” Mark Jenkins