Mark Brereton was born and raised in the ceramic city of Stoke-on-Trent, UK, in the late seventies. He is a photographic artist that creates photo-illustrative artworks, with an abstract style. Brereton has a strong passion for dramatic visuals often inspired by sci-fi cinema, pop art, and graphic design. His artworks are created using a mixed media approach exploring the realms of diorama, light painting, typography, photography, and installation, with the final outcome being photo/graphic prints and original pieces.
Self-taught or art school?
My degree is in Graphic Design and my postgrad is in Photography, so I tend to fuse all of these skills in my artwork. I think I’ve had positive and negative experiences in and out of self-taught and academic environments. But I mostly thrive in creative environments trying to push boundaries, so art school was a positive love/hate relationship for me and it helped to further my critical thinking and art process.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
I think I’d like to own the artwork, The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili. It reminds me of finishing art college and visiting the Young British Artists exhibition, Sensation, from the Saatchi collection.
How would you describe your style?
I would say my artwork is predominately conceptual with an abstract aesthetic, a splash of surrealism, and current cultural references to pop art. I tend to mix a digital approach with traditional materials – photography, graphic design, installation, and still life are the main modes and style outcomes.
Is narrative important within your work?
Yes. I would say it’s vital to my artwork and why I create art. I always try to tell a story, sometimes it is very open and self-explanatory, sometimes it tells many stories with multi-layers and sometimes it may be just a hint, leaving the viewer to create their own story. It can be fictional or fact, but whatever the artwork the narrative becomes intertwined until it’s a total thing. I often focus on political or social issues.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
I briefly mentioned I was influenced by the Young British Artists from the 1997 Sensation exhibition (Chris Ofili, Damien Hurst, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas, and Marc Quinn etc.). I think because I had also recently finished art college and seeing how artwork can connect and have an effect on general people outside of the academic circle or your own art peers was a big revelation for me. At that time media and news were still dominated by printed circulation, and love it or hate it, the press wanted to find outrage and worthless need for art but it introduced it to the masses, and I loved this idea of gaining recognition, good or bad. Gaining more experience and maturity I now have a much wider collection of favourite artists. These include people from all categories of art, from film director Guillermo del Toro to musicians Aphex Twin, and Tai Chi Martial Artist, Cheng Man-Chi’ng. I like the subtlety and detail found in a combination of visual and conceptual layers.
What or who inspires your art?
On a very basic level, I believe my artwork and fascination with seeing things from an artistic viewpoint were heavily inspired by my early childhood. I was an 80’s child, so bright bold colourful things had a visual impact, along with the early days of computing and computer games, which motivated my graphic art approach and storytelling. Over the years I’ve found increasing inspiration in every day and how we live our lives as a society and culture. It doesn’t have to be a pleasant thing or person that inspires me either. For example, the fighting and death in Ukraine encourage me to also fight issues for good.
Are there any recurring themes within your work and can you tell us about them?
At the moment one recurring theme is based on ‘human future and living’, this is motivated by how the increasing population will live on the future earth. Will the global population ever find peace with each other? Will we start to protect our natural environments better? Is there a need to find other life and liveable planets other than Earth? Just some of these questions are raised throughout my artworks and narratives. My personal interest in sci-fi cinema also plays into my art reflecting how self-destructing the human animal can be and investigating this theme through the now and future. Another recurring theme is ‘the human relationship we have with food and eating’. My curiosity about food stems from a natural health necessity after becoming ill several years ago and needing to change my diet for a healthier future. My artwork now questions the food we eat as a human and the impact food can have on our emotional, psychological, and physical bodies. This also interrelates into how food impacts the planet and so also crosses into the human future and living theme.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
My studio is based in a room within my home. It consists of a couple of desks hosting two computers and a number of cameras and lenses. On a third desk I have an area for making, constructing, and overall three-dimensional building for sets and displays used in artworks. Along with these I also have a number of different lights and lighting setups for studio and location photoshoots. Lastly, I have a comfortable chair and TV, this is a very important part of my artwork process because I create my best ideas and work when I’m at my most comfortable and relaxed. I find this fluid approach works well for me.
Do you have any studio rituals?
The only studio ritual I can think of is what I mentioned previously, to have a relaxed and comfortable approach to creativity and ideas making/creating. I find the more relaxed my body and mind, the better ideas flow. I try not to force things too much and let things work or not work naturally. So, my ritual is, to get comfortable and get relaxed. I tend to work in silence and don’t usually play music whilst making, I think this comes from a past residency experience I had whilst working in a Buddhist temple and art studio. For me, the quietness is less distracting and contributes to the overall fluid and relaxing environment.
What are you working on currently?
I have ongoing artworks that I call ‘one offs’, these are short artworks that I can often complete in a few days and are usually original artworks that are sold as commercial pieces. Along with these I often work on a few projects and longer series of artworks. I have an ongoing psycho-geography project re-exploring my home town of Stoke-On-Trent after falling out of love with it. And I’m also working on an ongoing series of artworks that explores current relationships with fast foods after the pandemic and lockdown experiences.
Where can we buy your art?
My artwork is currently for sale through several online galleries and exhibition spaces. These include:
What are your ambitions?
After taking some time off artistic endeavours due to illness and the global pandemic, I’ve learnt to live in the moment and appreciate the smaller things I’m grateful for. So, at the moment my ambitions are steadily working through my art projects and ideas, completing them, exhibiting them, and selling some art along the way.
My website can be found at www.breretonfoto.com my Instagram can be found at https://www.instagram.com/breretonfoto/
View more work in The Flux Winter Virtual Exhibition.
