Shot with 35mm film by Britt, Permanent Mark’s longtime right-hand mate.
In the lead-up to Five Lives in One, we spent some time talking with Permanent Mark about the work he’s preparing for the exhibition, the different mediums that have shaped his practice, and the experiences that continue to find their way into what he’s making today.
Mark was born in Libya to a father from London and a mother from South Africa, and spent much of his childhood in Algeria. Long before he ever picked up a tufting gun, rugs were already part of his visual world. He remembers visiting markets as a kid and being surrounded by them—patterns, colors, textures, and craftsmanship that he says became ingrained in his DNA. The road back to rugs wasn’t direct.
About eight years ago, Mark was living in Spain when he lost a bar he owned and found himself broke and at one of the lowest points of his life. He came across a silkscreen table and started making prints. The work sold. He made his rent. More importantly, it confirmed that tattooing, the profession he had practiced for three decades, wasn’t the only way forward. From there, one thing kept leading to another.
Printmaking moved into collage. Collage moved into sculpture. Cyanotype followed, including large-scale works inspired in part by David Hockney’s photographic practice, which Mark began painting over and pushing further. The mediums changed because Mark changed with them. Staying in one lane has never suited him.
Tufting arrived almost by accident. After returning from Spain following his mother’s burial, Mark met a woman at a bar who told him she made rugs. The conversation was enough. He bought yarn, got a tufting machine, and started figuring it out.
What began as another medium to explore eventually became a substantial part of his practice. Even then, making rugs wasn’t enough. Mark began asking what else tufting could become. That led him to furniture, incorporating his textile work into wooden chairs and benches and bringing multiple forms of making into a single object.
The imagery running through these works reaches back just as far. Japanese, Polynesian, and Borneo influences reflect traditions Mark has spent decades around, studying and admiring. Warriors, traditional tattoo imagery, bold graphic forms, and intricate patterning are taken out of their expected contexts and rebuilt through yarn, furniture, and other materials. For Mark, it’s another way of taking something familiar and seeing what happens when it passes through a different medium. Among all that movement, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: pen and ink.
That story goes back to boarding school in London, where Mark was required to write with fountain pens. He hated it. Something that once represented monotony and restriction eventually became one of the most dependable parts of his creative life. Mediums come and go. Subject matter changes. Mark can always sit down at home with ink and draw.
Even painting carries family history. Mark’s mother was an accomplished oil painter whose work, according to Mark, was colllected by the King of Saudi Arabia. He still describes oil painting as something of a holy grail—another place his practice could eventually lead. There isn’t a neat progression to any of this, and that’s probably the point.
Five Lives in One isn’t a body of work manufactured around an exhibition concept. It’s Permanent Mark now. It’s what he’s making, what he’s interested in, and where more than four decades of working with images have brought him.
The exhibition title definitely carries weight. Mark sees his life in stages. Right now, he considers himself somewhere in his fourth life, moving toward a fifth and final one—the life that carries through the end and whatever comes beyond it. Through all of those lives, Mark has kept making.
Film gave way to tattooing. Tattooing existed alongside drawing and art. Prints became collages. Collages became sculpture. Photography led into cyanotype. Cyanotype met painting. Rugs became furniture. Something fails, something changes, another door opens, and Mark gets back to work. There is absolute resilience in that.
Permanent Mark has spent his life adapting, rebuilding, learning new ways to work, and refusing to let any single medium—or any single chapter—define what comes next. Five Lives in One is where all of that stands today.
Five Lives In One will have an opening reception on Saturday, September 5th from 6-9pm. The exhibition will be on view at Timeless Thrills from September 5th to October 17th. Learn more here.