Boyle Family

Boyle Family is a group of collaborative artists based in London. Mark Boyle and Joan Hills met in Harrogate, Yorkshire in 1957. Joan had studied art and architecture and was bringing up her first son Cameron whilst running her own business. Mark was in the army, writing poetry. After a period of working separately on visual art pieces, they incrementally moved into a natural collaboration – agreeing that art should not exclude anything as a potential subject.

Wherever Mark and Joan lived became their studio, so it seemed natural and necessary that friends and family be co-opted to help whenever there was a big show going off or an event to put on. From very early on, Mark and Joan’s children, Sebastian and Georgia, went around the studio, doing bits here and there, gradually getting more deeply involved: going on working trips, expeditions, helping to finalise and hang exhibitions. This co-creational approach also was applied to the evolution of the work itself and led to innovative and collaborative partnerships with many artists, performers, musicians, filmmakers and dancers, notably Jimi Hendrix and the psychedelic jazz-rock pioneers Soft Machine.

Originally the work went under Mark Boyle’s name, largely because Mark and Joan were more concerned with making their work than attempting to fight the stereotype that artists were solo and usually male. Labels never mattered to them – it was the work that was important, not the marketing, image or personal recognition. Taking the view that if the art world wanted to believe in obsessed, lone male artists starving in their studios, they could present their work in a way that would fit. However, as their work became widely known, and at the same time the artistic stereotype began to broaden, they began to exhibit as Mark Boyle and Joan Hills. As adults, Sebastian and Georgia both opted to remain part of the team and since 1985 the four of them have exhibited as Boyle Family. Following the death of Mark Boyle in May 2005, Boyle Family continues to work and exhibit internationally, and to progress the execution of their best known work, the huge global World Series.... read more

Boyle Family Paintings and Drawings

Study of Cobbles with Mud, Tyre Tracks & Stones, Lorry Park Series

Boyle Family: Study of Cobbles with Mud, Tyre Tracks & Stones, Lorry Park Series, 1974