“I really have to feel like I’m somehow breaking new ground,” he says, “and that is what has been the real joy for me over the past 20 years — this feeling that I’m ploughing a field that nobody else is.” However, for the first time in 20 years of producing documentary projects, “[The theme that Neville discovered running through his images was the search for an Ecotopia, a term coined by Ernest Callenbach in his 1975 utopian novel of the same name, and the community, which developed around that. The photographer studied Fine Art at the University of Reading before completing an MA in conceptual art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Brittany has more than 40,000 farms, mostly oriented towards cattle, pig and poultry breeding, and cereals and vegetable production. Exhibition at GwinZegal Centre of Art, and the book ‘Parade’ published by GwinZegal Editions. The abandoned bird nests that constitute the collection at the university seem to be metaphors for these spaces in Camlachie, and by relocating the nests to these empty houses, and photographing them in different configurations and arrangements in these actual spaces, Neville made a visually dramatic statement that comments both on the role of ‘the archive’, and on gentrification.The slides themselves were later made available at two different locations only; the Biomedical Department of Glasgow University ( where they are being used by students interested in examining bird behaviour and animal architecture ), and a local community centre in Glasgow’s east end, where the same slides serve a totally different purpose ( as a social document of housing in the area, and a nostalgic function for local residents who have since been rehoused ).The third and final element of the show consisted of three large banners depicting scenes taken from Hieronymous Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’. This message is counterbalanced with the contradictory references to painting genres which reinforce the idea that power is a result of land ownership, and that images should foremost be aesthetically pleasing in order to communicate.‘Newborn Lamb’ from the Audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008‘Animal Farm’ from the audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008‘Annie and Snowy’, from the Audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’ , Mark Neville, 2008‘Blue Tit Flight’ from the audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville 2008‘Fancy’ from the Audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008‘Goat Pedicure’, from the Audio slide installation, ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008/‘Supper’, from the Audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008Sheriff from the Audio slide installation ‘Tula Fancies’, Mark Neville, 2008Photographs for the House (group of four framed prints, 2008)Production still from ‘Fancy Pictures’ ( 16mm film, 18 mins, 2008) Mark NevilleBook production and unique dissemination as a public artwork, 2004/2005Photographs, text, and audio, later forming a gallery installation in 2006As shown in Modern Art Oxford, and Dick Institute, Kilmarnock. People from all backgrounds in the region seem to be supporters, particularly its agricultural community. The images now served a purpose of funnelling funds back into the Port, and yet were also balanced in their role as social documentation by co-presenting the responses of that community, both negative and positive, to the very same photographs, and to their contextualisation within a book given uniquely to the town.‘The Port Glasgow Book Project was a definite event, which took place in a certain place and time… The important question seems to be; ‘where is the art, exactly, which audience is it meant to speak to, and who owns it?’ Is the art in the quality of the photographs which featured in the book, is it in the book itself as an object, or is it in the contextualisation of the book solely within the Port ?The work puts equal emphasis on how Neville's images are disseminated, as it does upon their formal quality and content. As is the case with any welfare or claim system, especially one operating in a region brutalised by decades of war, occupation, and abject poverty, fraudulent claims are common. Locals bring their proposals and claims to a clinic held by the British Army on a weekly basis at this patrol base in Helmand. Shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020An outdoor exhibition of prints at En Avant de Guingamp football stadium, Guingamp, Brittany, France, runs until October 31st 2019.
Further investigating the validity of this comparison, the artist then presented twenty of the images to a head boy and head girl at local school Rothesay Academy, claiming the shots were taken in Tula, and asked them to make an accompanying soundtrack inspired by mother Russia.