Dr Mark Ingham

Biography

Mark Ingham – Artist, Educator, Researcher

Dr. Mark Ingham is a nationally celebrated artist, scholar, and educator recognised for his radical pedagogies, socio-political installations, and influential contributions to contemporary art and design education. His interdisciplinary career spans over five decades, during which he has continually pushed the boundaries between creative practice, critical theory, and experimental education.

After studying at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, Mark earned a place at the Sculpture Department ot Chelsea School of Art. His time there marked the beginning of an extraordinary trajectory: he became the first Chelsea graduate in over thirty years to be admitted to the Postgraduate Sculpture Programme at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL). His culminating installation at the Slade, an interrogative, site-responsive work encircling the institution’s sunken courtyard, received critical acclaim, notably from the renowned dancer and choreographer Michael Clark (CBE). The work was later exhibited at Riverside Studios, solidifying his reputation as a bold and boundary-pushing artist.

In recognition of his early contributions, Mark was awarded the prestigious Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. There, he conceived a trilogy of provocative exhibitions: Four Follies, Urban Constructs, and Paradise in Peckham. The latter, an expansive public installation spanning over a mile along the former Surrey Canal in South London, was commissioned as the third project by the then-emerging Artangel Trust. Composed of suspended handmade and found objects in 50 semi-urban trees, the piece challenged enduring power asymmetries in Peckham through poetic disruption and research-informed intervention. These pioneering works are widely credited with bringing the spirit of Arte Povera into a UK context, influencing a generation of artists through his radical reimagining of materiality, location, and form.

Mark’s inclusion in New British Sculpture at the Air Gallery, alongside artists such as Cornelia Parker, Rob Kesseler, Hermione Wiltshire, and Sharon Kivland, was a pivotal moment, marking his emergence into national and international art forums. His work has since been exhibited across leading UK institutions and internationally, including: the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Riverside Studios, Kettle’s Yard Cambridge, Pomeroy Purdey Gallery, Stoke Garden Festival, Art Takes Times Square (New York), Metropole Galleries Folkestone, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Lieu d'Art et Action Contemporaine), Dunkerque.

Parallel to his studio practice, Mark has sustained a deep commitment to socially engaged pedagogy and arts education. He has served as Artist-in-Residence in numerous schools, galleries, and community settings, supported by institutions such as the Sir John Cass Foundation, Hayward Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, and the Museum of Modern Art Oxford. He has work in prisons, young offenders institutions and with ex-prisoners. These experiences led him to undertake a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Institute of Education (UCL), catalysing a long-standing parallel career in creative education.

Mark subsequently took on key educational roles: first as Education Officer at the Whitechapel Art Gallery’ and later as Course Leader for Art and Design Foundation at Kingsway College. His interest in the critical intersections of pedagogy, creativity, and cultural politics led him to pursue practice-based doctoral research at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) studentship. His PhD explored the epistemologies of art and family photography, particularly through the lens of autobiographical memory and place.

He has continued exhibiting work nationally and internationally, including his acclaimed installation 120 Days of Staggering and Stammering (Ars Magna et Lucis) at Dilston Grove, funded by Arts Council England (ACE). Featuring 120 hand-crafted LED slide projectors, the piece was reviewed as “a fragile interplay of place and time suspended in spheres of coloured light… a meditation on the limits of the image, local, universal, ideational, and concrete.”

Mark is currently Reader in Critical and Nomadic Pedagogies at University of the Arts London (UAL), where he is also Co-Chair of the Professoriate and founder of the Experimental Pedagogies Research Group (EPRG) https://eprg.arts.ac.uk/ a vibrant community of over 500 educators and researchers dedicated to innovation in creative learning. He also established the Nomadic Detective Agency (NDA), a speculative research-atelier model that explores radical teaching through improvisation, rhizomatic learning, and creative disruption.

As a leading voice in higher arts education, Mark has spoken at over 20 international conferences, delivered three keynote addresses, and published extensively on themes ranging from memory and visual culture to experimental pedagogical strategies. He was Chief Editor of the groundbreaking volume Autobiographical Memory and Photography, overseeing 27 interdisciplinary contributions, and is about to publish his long-anticipated monograph with Routledge: Nomadic Learners in Rhizomatic Universities: Rethinking the Futures of Creative Education.

A recipient of the National Teaching Fellowship (NTF), Mark writes and speaks openly about his experiences as a dyslexic academic advocating for inclusive and imaginative approaches to critical writing in art and design education. His commitment to mentorship is significant: he has directly mentored over 50 staff to achieve Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), supervised 20+ PhD students (including 9 completions), and served as internal and external examiner for over 15 doctoral vivas and reviews. He is also a reviewer and recognised fourth reviewer in the National Teaching Fellowship assessment process for Advance HE

Mark’s practice, whether in gallery, classroom, or field site, is one of unceasing inquiry. His work, published and exhibited, can be explored further at [markingham.org](https://markingham.org/) and [nomadicdetectiveagency.org](https://nomadicdetectiveagency.org/), where experimental learning art making is not merely a method, but a way of being. He insists that the journey of making, researching, and teaching is not about certainty, but about radical curiosity, ethical complexity, and the joy of wandering with purpose.
"A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window." Gilles Deleuze (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia)

"Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade." Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto)

“Art struggles with chaos but it does so in order to render it sensory.” Deleuze and Guattari:
"Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole." Derek Walcott

*The origin of the word ‘nomad’ for Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, is not, as many have assumed, a romanticised image of actual nomadic peoples, such as the Bedouins, but rather Immanuel Kant's disparaging claim that the outside of philosophy is a wasteland fit only for nomads.

Keywords: Creative Education, Critical Pedagogy, Nomadic Pedagogy, Rhizomatic Learning, Assemblages, Installation art, conceptual art, photography, autobiographical memory, fuzzy narratives, sculpture, projected images, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari.