Triennial 2008   Artists   Mark Dion

Title: Mobile Gull Appreciation Unit
Location: This is a mobile work. See homepage and Visitor Centre for daily locations

“Gulls are the most conspicuous non-human denizens of Folkestone”, Mark Dion declared after his first site visit. Dion’s staffed mobile unit made in the shape of a seagull provides information about these often unloved birds. ‘The Mobile Gull Appreciation Unit functions as a clearing house for information about the evolution, ethnology, natural history, environmental status and folklore of these remarkable animals’. Folkestone is lucky to be host to a rather rare type of seagull – the Mediterranean Gull – which is found in larger numbers here than anywhere else in the UK. A Field Guide to the various local gull species, produced in collaboration with local gull enthusiasts will be distributed from the Unit.

Born New Bedford Massachusetts, USA 1961. Lives in New York City and works
worldwide.

Mark Dion’s artwork incorporates aspects of archaeology, ecology, detection, and systems of classification by which people have tried to bring order to the world.

Recent solo exhibitions include

Systema Metropolis, Natural History Museum – London 2007

Carré D’Art, Nîmes, France, 2007

Miami Art Museum 2006

The Academy of Fine Arts – Vienna 2004

Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts – San Francisco, California 1998

Recent group exhibitions include

Surrealism and Beyond – Israel Museum 2007

Drawing from the Modern, MoMA – New York 2005

Sculpture Projects – Muenster 1997

Dion was awarded the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2001,The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2006, and received an honorary Doctorate of Arts degree from the University of Hartford in 2003.

See Mark Dion’s work
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com