Mark McGowan

Who is Mark McGowan?

Mark McGowan B.A. is a street artist, performance artist and prominent public protester who has gone by the artist name Chunky Mark and more recently The Artist Taxi Driver. By profession, McGowan is a London taxi driver and occasional University speaker and arts tutor. McGowan is known internationally for his performance art including shock art, street art and installation art, and as a stuntman, internet personality, video blogger, social commentator, social critic, satirist, political activist, peace activist, and an anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-capitalist anti-monarchist and anti-power elite protester.

Under the artist name "Chunky Mark", McGowan entered the mainstream news in the early 2000s for his unconventional, satirical, sometimes comedic and/or ironic, and often absurd approach to public protest and demonstration. At a demonstration on London in 2003 in which he sat in a bathtub filled with beans and sausages for twelve days to celebrate English culture and food, Chunky Mark described himself to BBC News as Britain's answer to David Blaine, "but sitting in a plastic box is nothing compared to what I will be doing."