Mark Swords’ work displays an increasingly intuitive engagement with various approaches to painting and art making. His practice is well described as an instinctive and ill-disciplined pursual of curiosities.
Craft, and specifically the idea of hand-making or building, play a central role in Swords’ work. There is a sense of the artist’s self learning and even re-learning through his engagement with materials, such that a piece of work may result from the solving of a self imposed problem.
This concept of ‘craft’ should not be confused with the more easily defined idea of skill. Swords’ work is constructed using ordinary materials, from paint to string to rags and there is no attempt to subvert or hide such acts as gluing or sewing. There is an openness and a questioning in this practice, the work itself often suggesting further problems as opposed to conclusions.
Mark Swords was born in Dublin in 1978. He graduated with an MA from the National College of Art and Design in 2003. He has had two solo shows in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. Most recently he was invited to show in “Futures” 2009, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin and “Look Again: Recent art from Ireland, Purdy Hicks, London. He currently lives and works in County Wicklow.