MARCUS TOMLINSON

For over three decades, London-based film and image-maker Marcus Tomlinson has created visionary photographs and films that uniquely combine art and fashion sensibilities. His work experiments with both still and moving imagery, often exploiting the creative tensions between the two.

In the 1990s, Tomlinson produced photographs for iconic Face, and i-D magazines and fashion designer Koji Tatsuno. Years before Photoshop, his photographs used experimental techniques such as multiple exposure and hand-masking. He experimented with the boundaries between still and moving imagery in his pieces, creating photographic sequences of ‘stills’; and occasionally producing flip books in the style of early film experiments.

In 1998 he was commissioned by Philip Treacy to create a photographic series of the designer’s hats for the fashion magazine Visionaire, which became defining for both the photographer and the milliner. Subsequently Visionaire asked Tomlinson to create a series of images featuring fashion designer Hussein Chalayan's clothes.

Tomlinson created fashion films and photographic pieces with Hussein Chalayan from 1999 to 2002 including Aeroplane Dress in 1999.

At a time when fashion film was about to break through as a new form of fashion image-making, fashion designers grasped the power of Tomlinson’s films as aesthetic statements. From 2001-2008 Tomlinson worked with Issey Miyake, creating stop-motion animation of the designer’s clothes for an exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin (2001) and six collaborative films for Miyake’s A-POC line. In 2009, Tomlinson commissioned Gareth Pugh to make a piece for his film for MUDAM (The Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art) in Luxembourg.

Over the last decade Tomlinson has worked with numerous international brands on projects in both still and moving image include Hermes, BMW, Mercedes, Samsung and Porsche alongside his own practise.

Selected exhibitions include: Museum of Fine Art, Boston Techstyle (2016), The National Art Center, Tokyo, The work of Miyake Issey (2016), Centre Pompidou, Paris ASVOFF festival (2013) Spring Projects, London (2013), Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode. Paris Mannequin - le corps de la mode (2013), Musée Bargoin, France Metamorphoses (2012), Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris Hussein Chalayan fashion narratives (2011), Staatliche Museen zu. Berlin Visions & Fashion (2011), London Design Museum, London From fashion and back (2009), Musée d’art Moderne. Luxembourg, RRRIPP!! Paper Fashion (2008), Arles Festival, Kinetic (2008), Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Form (2008), MOCA Los Angeles. Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Skin Tight: The sensibility of the flesh (2004), Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane. Hussein Chalayan & Marcus Tomlinson (2002), Tate Modern, London, Century City (2001).