Mark Houghton is a British artist who trained initially, and gained his first degree at Middlesex University (formerly the Hornsey School of Art) and subsequently at the Cardiff Metropolitan University (MA Fine Art), at the Cardiff School of Art & Design.
Houghton's work has long been concerned with our relationship to the built environment, and often incorporates objects and materials encountered there. His practice highlights overlooked aspects of the everyday, in order to isolate and represent aspects of the urban environment. His aim is to forge a visual poetry of the commonplace, to elevate the irrelevance of the ordinary, in an attempt to decode and decipher the complexity of the environments that we inherit and inhabit.
Houghton moved to Welsh Borders in 1987 and has exhibited in both Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as undertaking several residencies both here, and abroad in Spain and the US. His work appears regularly in both group and solo exhibitions and has recently been acquired for private collections. He has collaborated with a painter, Kelly Best, who is based in Cardiff, having joint shows in both Cardiff and Manchester. As well as appearing in catalogues, his work features in a world wide survey of 30 multi-disciplinary artists, “The Language of Mixed Media Sculpture” by Jac Scott, published by the Crowood Press, May 2014. In the same year, he was elected to the Royal Society of Sculptors.