About

John Mullen (b. 1972) is a visual artist based in Edinburgh. He received an MFA in Sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art in 2003. His artwork is often dealing with hidden and underlying politics in regeneration and renewal processes. One of the fields of focus in his work has been identifying hidden locations of forgotten publicly owned statues, their relocation and their current condition. Over the past three years he has been researching historical and contemporary regeneration processes in the port town of Leith, which since 1920 has been under the legislative control of Edinburgh authorities. He has produced artwork and given presentations analysing the effects of cultural and architectural loss on this post-industrial community, and its vision and strategies for the future.

He has exhibited broadly in the UK as well as internationally. Select exhibitions include: ‘Young Athenians’ at ‘Destroy Athens’, Athens, Greece 2007, ‘It’s not Work that’s the Problem, it’s the People’ GRV, Edinburgh 2008 and ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: One segment of Nomadism in Art’ Berlin 2015.

In 2013, 2014, and 2015, he attended the University of the West of Scotland’s international summer school in Gdansk, Poland, where in 2015 he installed a temporary artwork as part of Cultural and Intangible Heritage in Post-Industrial Waterfront Heritage Zones funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

He has recently completed ‘Riverside Solidarity’ residency between Govan and Gdansk funded by Creative Scotland in 2017.

 

Papers/Presentations:

Choosing histories in the shipyard – History of the Gdansk Shipyard. European Solidarity Centre, Gdansk, Nov 3rd – 4th 2016

Choosing Histories: Agency and Motive in the Representation of Cultural Heritage – ACHS 2016 – What does heritage change? Montreal 7th June 2016

The use of heritage in altering the perception of a place: The case of Leith, Scotland. -Cultural and Intangible Heritage, Gdansk Symposium, 6th August 2015