Bio



Mario is a photographic artist, curator and educator based in Manchester (b. 1980, Kamakura, Japan). He graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2007 and continues to work on his own projects and commissions from his adopted home city.

On a planet increasingly shaped by human activity, his personal work is driven by a curiosity about our peculiar, paradoxical relationship to the non-human natural environment and how this  visually manifests in our present moment.

His work has been exhibited and published in Britain and internationally at Open Eye Gallery, Centre for British Photography, HOME MCR. He is currently developing long-term projects in both the UK and Italy that explore place in the context of industrial legacy, nature and community and is currently an artist in residence in Wigan Borough with Open Eye Gallery.

As a freelance curator, Mario has led and curated on a number of contemporary photography exhibitions in the North, working with and alongside organisations such as Open Eye Gallery, Impressions Gallery, HOME Manchester and Castlefield Gallery.





Email: mariopopham@gmail.com
Telephone: +44(0)7940 913666
Instagram: @mariopopham





Selected Exhibitions:

Strange Eden, Climate Lab, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 2024 (Group)

To the Valley Below, IPE 165,  Royal Photographic Society, Bristol, 2024 (Group)

Strange Eden, Open Call Country-Landscape-Environment, Centre for British Photography, London, 2023 (Group)

Seaside Terminus, West Coast Photo, Signal, Barraow-in-Furness, 2021 (Group)

Of Flesh and Stone, Granada Galleries, HOME, Manchester, 2018 (Solo)

Shaped by Stone, ‘On the Stony Path’, GroundWork Gallery,
Norfolk, 2017 (Group)

Shaped by Stone, ’Northern Light’ group exhibition, SIA Gallery,
Sheffield, 2016 (Group)




Curatorial:


See Change, Look Photo Biennial 2022: Wigan and Leigh, 2023

She Appeared to Vanish,  Waterside & HOME, Manchester, UK, 2021

First Light, Castlefield New Art Spaces, Warrington, UK, 2021

Sweet DebrisWaterside, Manchester, UK,  2018







Commissions:

Curator/Producer, Open Eye Hub, Wigan and Leigh
Lead Artist In Residence, Open Eye Gallery, 2023-2025
Return to Nature, Open Eye Gallery, 2021


Awards:

Grain Portfolio Prize, FORMAT Festival, 2023
Magenta Flash Forward Award – Winner, 2013
Nikon Discovery Awards – Shortlisted, 2007
Obswerver Hodge Award – Highly Commended, 2006