Mark Shorter

About

Mark Shorter’s performances push the limits of farce through acts of endurance. Inspired by the variety theatre and the performance of persona he makes art through a variety of guises such as the vaudeville cowboy, Renny Kodgers; the quixotic journeyman Tino La Bamba; and the time-travelling landscape painting critic Schleimgurgeln. In his installations, he incorporates sculptural objects, which function as “resistance props” pushing the artist’s body to a point of aesthetic discovery. These scenarios are designed to question dominant narratives around masculinity and the body stretching and turning the ideologies that sit deep in their form to see what bends or breaks. Recent exhibitions and performances include Song for von Guérard, Carriageworks as part of The National (2019), Hello Stranger, Campbelltown Art Centre (2018), The Lonesome Receiver Gertrude Glasshouse (2018), 6m of Plinth, Artspace, Sydney (2016); Mapping La Mancha, Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand (2015); 50 Ways to Kill Renny Kodgers, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2014); The Groker, Plato’s Cave, EIDEA House, New York (2015); and Acts of Exposure, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart (2013). From 2010 to 2012 Shorter was the host of The Renny Kodgers Quiz Hour on Sydney radio station FBi 94.5FM.

LIVE DREAMS: JESTER, 2022

Instagram: @marktshorter