Craig Mulholland
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Installation view, Craig Mulholland: Grandes et Petites Machines, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, 2008
Born: 1969, Glasgow
Based: Glasgow
Represented by: Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow
Craig Mulholland was born in Glasgow in 1969. He studied Drawing and Painting at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1991. Solo exhibitions include: ‘Plastic Casino’ (Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow); RFID (Changing Room, Stirling); ‘Arphid’ (Whitechapel Project Space, London); ‘Bearer on Demand’, (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow); Tate Lightbox, London, and most recently ‘Grandes et Petites Machines’ (Sorcha Dallas/Glasgow School of Art /Spike Island, Bristol). He has participated in the group exhibitions ‘New Work UK4’ (Whitechapel Project Space, London), ‘If Not Now’ (Broadway 1602, NY), ‘Blackberrying’ (Christina Wilson, Copenhagen), ‘The Metal Bridge’ (Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow), and ‘To Bring Forth and Give’ (Glasgow Print Studio). Mulholland was a recent recipient of the Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award. His subsequent body of work, ‘Grandes et Petite Machines’ included the cinematic film ‘Peer to Peer’ which has since screened at Glasgow Film Theatre, Dundee Contemporary Arts, and in ‘Videonale’ (Kunstmuseum, Bonn). He is participating in a group shows at IMO, Copenhagen (curated by Will Bradley), Stills, Edinburgh and Artists Film & Video at the BBC, Glasgow, all 2010. Mulholland lives and works in Glasgow and is a part-time lecturer in the Painting and Printmaking Department of Glasgow School of Art.
“…the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process […] Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere.” (Foucault, Discipline and Power)
The dominant concerns within Mulholland’s recent work have centred on Foucauldian theories of power - ‘the political dream of the plague […] the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life’. The artist’s ‘anxious impudence towards technological and bureaucratic advance’ simultaneously hints at inherent paradoxes and contradictions within his work, such as his own participation in the neo-liberal culture industry. The thwarting of radicalism by collusion is an enduring interest, obliquely considered throughout Mulholland’s practice.
These interests have manifested themselves through a prolific body of work across a range of different media. Mulholland’s ability to meld complex, sometimes disparate ideas (e.g. RFID tagging; CCTV; surveillance culture; theories of consumption; opera; history painting; vandalism) into a holistic, almost infinitely self-reflexive series of installations is extremely rare. He has said that his works ‘seem to germinate from each other’ creating a rich texture to his exhibitions.
Recent installations have encompassed a plethora of disciplines – video, music, sculpture, text, sound works and drawing. All of these could be defined as elements of ‘painting in the expanded field’, pivoting variously between virtual and concrete form. Mulholland’s process often begins with drawings allusively informed by his interests (philosophical, theoretical or literary) followed by a synthesis which occurs through improvisation and studio experiment.
