Contact
Biography
Born Stockport, England, 1970.
Worked as a Civil Servant between 1988 - 1995.
Education
Ph.D Joint School of American Studies/Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural
Studies, University of Nottingham, Oct 1998 - May 2002
MA Critical Theory (Merit): School of Critical and Cultural Theory, University of Nottingham,
Oct 1997- Sept 1998
BA (Honours) Humanities (Accelerated Intensive Route) (1st Class): Department of English and
Media, Nottingham Trent University, July 1995 - July 1997
Current Role/ Employment
Sept. 2018 - Associate Professor in History of Art, Department of Cultural, Media, and Visual
Studies, University of Nottingham
Sept. 2012 - August 2018 Associate Professor in History of Art, Department of History of Art,
University of Nottingham
Summary of Achievements/Roles
Head of Department of History of Art (University of Nottingham) from August 2016 - July 2018; previously HoD 2012-2015;
Deputy Head of Cultural, Media, and Visual Studies (University of Nottingham) August 2018 -January 2019
Graduate School Associate Dean (Arts Faculty), 2012-15.
Track record of collaborating with galleries and museums: Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham;
Nottingham Contemporary; New Art Exchange; Derby Quad; Ffotogallery; Tate Modern;
Photographers Gallery; Reykjavik Museum of Photography; British Museum; Daiwa Anglo-
Japanese Foundation; Nevada Museum of Art; Gagosian, Madison Avenue, NYC; Centre for
Creative Photography, Tucson; Royal Photographic Society, Bristol.
I regularly collaborate with artists, photographers, and film-makers, and have curated several exhibitions:
Curator: Sugar Paper Theories, Royal Photographic Society, Oct 2019-Dec 2019 [previously shown Reykjavik Museum of Photography, Sept 2017-Jan 2018]
Curator: Homage to the Bauhaus: The Kirkland Collection, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, March-Jun 2019
Curator: See Here [Group Show/International Roster], Old Neale's Auction House, Nottingham, Jun-July 2018
Curator: Impossible Views [Group show] British Geological Survey, Nottinghamshire; May-Aug 2017
Curator: And Now it's Dark: American Night Photography, Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham; Exhibition travelled to Ffotogallery (Cardiff) 'Diffusion' programme in October 2015
Track record of collaborating with galleries and museums at the University of Nottingham (Djanogly), and also Nottingham Contemporary, New Art Exchange, Derby Quad, as well as nationally and internationally - Ffotogallery; Tate Modern; Photographers Gallery; Guernsey Photo Festival; Reykjavik Museum of Photography; British Museum; Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation; Nevada Museum of Art; Gagosian, Madison Avenue, NYC; Centre for Creative Photography, Tucson; Royal Photographic Society, Bristol.
Selected Publications
Essay in Catalogue: 'Vanishing Boundaries' in Mark Rawlinson, The Bauhaus and Latin America, Nottingham: Beam Editions, forthcoming 2021
Exhibition Catalogue Essay: 'Bold Nomads of the Cosmos,' in Mishka Henner, Your Only Chance to Survive is to Leave with Us, 20/9/19-31/10/19, Galleria Bianconi, Milan
Exhibition Catalogue Essay: 'Vanishing Boundaries' for Homage to the Bauhaus, Nottingham: Djanogly Art Gallery, 2019
Essay in photobook: 'Coney Island: American Prometheus' in Rob Ball, Coney Island, Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2017
Exhibition Catalogue Essay: 'And Now it's Dark: American Night Photography,' Nottingham: Lakeside Arts Centre, 2015
Book Chapter: 'Like Trading Dust for Oranges: Ed Ruscha and Things of Interest' in Jeff Brouws et al. (eds), Various Small Books, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013
Book Chapter: Disconsolate and Inconsolable: Neutrality and New Topographics, in Rorhbach, J. & Greg Foster-Rice, Reframing New Topographics, Chicago, Center for American Places/University of Chicago Press, 2010
Monograph: American Visual Culture, Berg Press Spring 2009
Monograph: Charles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction, IB Tauris, December 2007
Expertise Summary
My research and teaching focuses on the development of modern and contemporary American art, photography, and visual cultures, with an interest also in critical and photographic theory. My current research examines the foundations of the so-called 'photo-boom' in American photography in the 1970s, exploring how the development of educational programmes, and new networks, such as the Society for Photographic Education, were crucial for this moment in photographic history.
This recent research relates to previous work on early American Modernisms, particularly the work of Charles Sheeler [Charles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction (IB Tauris: 2007]), as well as the development of American Visual Cultures (American Visual Culture (Bloomsbury, 2009). I have written about Ed Ruscha and Artist's Books (Various Small Books, MIT 2013), and photographer Robert Adams (in Reframing the New Topographics, University of Chicago Press) a have consderiable expertise in New Topographics photography.
I have a long standing interest in critical and visual theory, especially Theodor Adorno, but am also interested in the work of Walter Benjamin, Freud, Deleuze, Bataille and Derrida.
PhD Supervision
I would welcome proposals that relate to any aspect of my research interests, especially those with a focus on post-WWII American photographic histories.
Teaching Summary
My teaching is focused upon modern and contemporary American art, photography and visual cultures, and draws upon visual, critical and aesthetic theory.
Research Summary
My current research explores the 'minor histories' of post war American photography and relates to the renaissance of the medium in the USA during the 1970s, a renaissance whose origins can be traced… read more
Recent Publications
MARK RAWLINSON, 2017. Stephen Shore's Uncommon Seriality Photography and Culture. (In Press.)
RAWLINSON, M., 2013. "Like trading dust for oranges”: Ed Ruscha and things of interest. In: BROUWS, J., BURTON, W. and ZSCHIEGNER, H., eds., Various small books: referencing various small books by Ed Ruscha Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 8-27
RAWLINSON, M., 2010. Disconsolate and inconsolable: neutrality and new topographics. In: FOSTER-RICE, G. and ROHRBACH, J., eds., Reframing the new topographics Centre for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. 121-187
RAWLINSON, MARK, 2010. Marek Tobolewski: Taking a Line (Exhibition Catalogue Essay) Marek Tobolewski: Continuum in Symmetry, exhibition catalogue essay, Nottingham: Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre At: Nottingham: Djanogly Art Gallery
Current Research
My current research explores the 'minor histories' of post war American photography and relates to the renaissance of the medium in the USA during the 1970s, a renaissance whose origins can be traced back the the GI Bill and the Photography teaching programmes of the 1950s onwards. I am arguing that minor histories more usefully account for the divergent, experimental and often incoherent forms of practice that are the predominant focus of this project. By 'minor histories' I do not mean qualitatively less important or overlooked, many of the photographers and curators of interest (Robert Heinecken, Joyce Neimenas, Thomas Barrow, and Fred Parker) are not obscure or unknown. However, the dominant interpretative discourse of photography, it's 'major history,' has reduced many to the realm of 'historical context.'
The minor histories of this project are geographically specific: Rochester: Los Angeles; Chicago; New York; Albuquerque; and Philadelphia) and relate to theindividuals, (e.g. Lyons; Heinecken; Barrow; Fichter), networks and groups (feminist, anti-war, etc.), and the BFA/MFA programmes to be found at a range of institutions in these places.
Past Research
My PhD thesis, 'Charles Sheeler and the Dissenting Line: An Adornian Critique' (Supervisor: Professor Douglas Tallack, School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham), we revised an appeared as 'Charles Sheeler: modernism, precisionism and the borders of abstraction' with IB Tauris in 2007. Sheeler remains readily associated with Precisionism but his work is more contentious and radical than this category has ever conceived. Precisionist criticism sees Sheeler through too narrow a focus - a machine age aesthetic - and argues harmony - whether between painting and photography, realism and abstraction, the past and the present - is the best measure of the artist's most successful work (around 1931). The thesis/book argues against this reductionist perspective, drawing on Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, in order to consider dissonance - the dissenting lines in Sheeler's so called precisionism - as an absolutely crucial feature of his work; even those works presumed to epitomise harmony - e.g.Home, Sweet Home - are actually visual essays in dissonance. The thesis argues that dissonance in Sheeler reveals the artist as not quite so at home with American modernity or with modernism but that this is what marks out his work as radical and important.
The Sheeler book is to a degree engaged with American exceptionalism, and my second monograph, American Visual Culture is a hybrid-text, combining original research with theoretical exegesis. The text explores and explains the visualisation of American exceptionalist ideology-from Westward Expansion to the millennium marking 'American Century' exhibitions-through a variety of theoretical approaches and across media: art and exhibitions, posters, movies and television, war and lynching photography, advertising and magazine illustration