Marcus is one of New Zealand’s most prolific designers, having produced over 500 theatre designs and installation works since 2005. He has 23 national and international awards spanning visual art and design, specifically in the areas of theatre, fine arts, architecture, and museum design, and holds a current Creative New Zealand fellowship. In 2007 he designed Heat, the world’s first entirely zero-emission piece of touring theatre, for which he had to construct his own led fittings and design and build a touring wind and solar power supply. Each venue the show toured to would be taken offline and powered instead renewably. In 2009 he premiered Nag, a self-powered artist studio entirely constructed from recycled and found materials where the artists must pedal while working, spinning recycled washing machine motors that generate all the power they need. Nag has since had 46 gallery and festival seasons across NZ, Europe, and the USA and is still touring. In 2017 he completed a permanent interactive artwork powered by waves, Wash, for the Tauranga City Council, and in 2019 he launched an installation of his lightbox works, 101 Rants, which, with the help of twenty-five commissioned writers, transformed three floors of the public spaces of BATS Theatre for 101 days, and which is being published as a book in 2025. Marcus also won the inaugural NZ Arts Foundation Behind the Limelight award in 2021, which recognises artists whose work supports other artists, and then his daughter was born, which has slowed him down some. Throughout 2023-25 he has been building a new studio out of found materials and recycled theatre sets in Houghton Bay, Wellington, designing for theatre, and has created new works with Footnote Dance (Wellington), Mascall Dance (Vancouver), 5ever Books (Wellington) and Urban Dream Brokerage (Wellington). In 2024 he also helped create the Green-Green Room, a WCC-funded set, props and costume library aimed at reducing arts waste. He originally worked as a copywriter, so many of his works tend to revolve around the intersection of light and text. Marcus has a master’s degree in English Literature and Philosophy that he’s philosophical about, and his interests include finding sneaky ways to keep his emissions footprint low, growing vegetables, building bicycles, and reading things worth reading. He will have works at the Wanaka Festival of Colour, Dunedin Arts Festival, Loemis Festival, and the Auckland Writers Festival in early 2025.
