Boyle Family

Stuttgart, Galerie Muller, November 1973

Mark Boyle and Joan Hills were already building a reputation in the artistic counter-culture of the 1960’s with assemblages, light shows and happenings when in 1965 they began to make a series of relief sculptures based on randomly chosen sites around Shepherd’s Bush (having acquired a large map of the area, friend were invited to throw darts at it). The sites thus chosen were reproduced with painstaking accuracy, and the uncanny realism made the transfer of the un-regarded everyday surface beneath our feet to art image quite unlike anything being produced at the time. Some of the earliest Shepherd’s Bush studies, along with others produced on the Thames foreshore at Hammersmith, were exhibited at Indica, the short-lived but influential gallery run by Barry Miles and John Dunbar.

Although always collaborative (the Boyle children Sebastian and Georgia were involved from their earliest days), works were initially exhibited as Mark Boyle until 1985 when they officially became Boyle Family.   

Never giving details of their working methods to avoid distraction, Boyle Family’s approach to their art is one that emphasises simplified and non-judgmental presentation and allows the viewer a free hand to observe.