Mark Denton
Mark Denton was born in Greenwich, London, into a large family of scrap merchants. Everyone worked at G.F. Denton & Sons; Father, Mother, Uncles, Aunties, Denton, and all of his siblings. After yet another acid burn, aged 15, from a lorry load of car batteries, Mark decided the materials reclamation world was not for him. He enrolled at Ravensbourne’s School of Vocational Studies where he studied graphics, photography, and technical drawing.
Following an unglamorous start as a paste-up artist in the magazine ‘Knitter’s Digest’, Denton secured a job as an assistant typographer and visualizer at the London office of the American advertising agency, Leo Burnett. In less than a decade, Mark found himself as the Creative Director of his own agency and one of the most awarded Art Directors on the planet.
Then came a foray into directing TV commercials and a return to his first love, graphic design. Forever seeking new forms of self-expression, Mark kept busy designing everything in his world. Clothes, jewellery, wallpaper, furniture, the labels on his tins of beans; nothing was spared his artist’s eye.
Grasping every opportunity to expand his universe, found Mark juggling many hats; Mexican-wrestling fight Promoter, book and magazine Publisher, theatrical Producer, …
Mark Denton was born in Greenwich, London, into a large family of scrap merchants. Everyone worked at G.F. Denton & Sons; Father, Mother, Uncles, Aunties, Denton, and all of his siblings. After yet another acid burn, aged 15, from a lorry load of car batteries, Mark decided the materials reclamation world was not for him. He enrolled at Ravensbourne’s School of Vocational Studies where he studied graphics, photography, and technical drawing.
Following an unglamorous start as a paste-up artist in the magazine ‘Knitter’s Digest’, Denton secured a job as an assistant typographer and visualizer at the London office of the American advertising agency, Leo Burnett. In less than a decade, Mark found himself as the Creative Director of his own agency and one of the most awarded Art Directors on the planet.
Then came a foray into directing TV commercials and a return to his first love, graphic design. Forever seeking new forms of self-expression, Mark kept busy designing everything in his world. Clothes, jewellery, wallpaper, furniture, the labels on his tins of beans; nothing was spared his artist’s eye.
Grasping every opportunity to expand his universe, found Mark juggling many hats; Mexican-wrestling fight Promoter, book and magazine Publisher, theatrical Producer, and male model to name a few.
Over his expansive career, his creative flights of fancy have been exhibited across the globe, in the Saatchi Gallery and The Royal Academy, the ‘Power of the Poster’ exhibition at the V&A, ‘Art Mart’ at the Jealous Gallery, and notably as a ‘living exhibit’ under the name of Nobby Bottomshuffle (one of his many alter-egos) at the National Football Museum in Manchester.
