Solo show of mark mann - January 28th to April 4th

‘A room of one’s own’ is an expression that was popularised by Virginia Woolf, but which was originally taken from a love letter between the writer Lytton Strachey and the painter Duncan Grant, who were both members of the Bloomsbury set. These men yearned for a space they could define on their own terms away from the preying eyes of a hostile heteronormative world. With homosexuality only de-criminalised in England in the 1960s, many of the works on display reference a time before this, when men were arrested and charged with ‘Acts of Gross Indecency’, sometimes for something as simple as touching or kissing. 

For this exhibition, Mark Mann has brought together a group of his artworks inspired by the bravery of the queer interior. Through his finely crafted facades, the works conceal ugly realities and histories. They act as monuments to the people whose histories and realities they reference. Showing these works in the Cast Gallery brings these queer histories, which have so often remained hidden and unacknowledged, to the forefront. The viewer is invited to discover Mark’s works weaved throughout the gallery and to consider the histories that have inspired them.