Mark McGowan B.A.[1] (born 1966 in London, United Kingdom) is a street artist, performance artist and prominent public protester who has gone by the artist name Chunky Mark and more recently The Artist Taxi Driver.[2] By profession, McGowan is a London taxi driver and occasional University speaker and arts tutor. McGowan is known internationally for his performance art including shock art,[3] street art and installation art, and as a stuntman, internet personality, video blogger, social commentator, social critic, satirist, political activist, peace activist, and an anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-capitalist anti-monarchist and anti-power elite protester. Under the artist name Chunky Mark, McGowan entered the mainstream news in the early 2000s for his unconventional, satirical, sometimes comedic and/or ironic, and often absurd approach to public protest and demonstration. At a demonstration on London in 2003 in which he sat in a bathtub filled with beans and sausages for twelve days to celebrate English culture and food, Chunky Mark described himself to BBC News as Britains answer to David Blaine, but sitting in a plastic box is nothing compared to what I will be doing.[4] Chunky Mark conducted hundreds of performances in the UK and dozens around the world, stirring up some international attention, further debate on what art really is, controversy; and both support and mockery alike from intellectuals, the art world, private corporations, the police, the military, the tabloids and the public. For some of his more controversial, political-edged performance protests, McGowan has applied for police permission beforehand,[5] but with others he has not.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] McGowan abandoned the Chunky Mark persona in late 2010 and fully adopted the much more popular Artist Taxi Driver persona for his web blog on YouTube, where he films himself alone in his taxi between fares, often wearing dark sunglasses, and in which he rants passionately and emotionally about the news and issues of the day. The Artist Taxi Drivers official YouTube channel (which is currently still under the ChunkyMark name) saw a significant rise in popularity as The Artist Taxi Driver began to touch on corruption in politics; currently the channel has thousands of videos made by McGowan, has more than 27,000 subscribers, and had totaled over five and a half million views.[13] Despite health problems McGowan has continued his work, and in 2013 resumed his performance art-public protest and launched the Wheres Daddys Pig? website to announce them.[14]
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 16:58:23 +0000
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