About
Lady Mary Helen Mack Last
Born in Oregon, USA · Currently living in Oxford, England
Mary Helen Mack Last is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work explores the body, identity, technology, and the ways people and institutions record, represent, and remember. Her practice moves between visual art, science, information science, and heritage, with a particular interest in what happens when the boundaries between person, image, object, and document become less certain.
She received a BSc (Honours) in Biology with a minor in Chemistry and a BA (Honours) in Studio Arts from Santa Clara University in 2014, followed by an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, in 2016. Her master's dissertation examined the motivations behind body modification and the pursuit of surgically achieved physical ‘perfection’. In 2023, she completed an MSc in Library and Information Science with Distinction and is currently undertaking a PhD in Information Science at the University of Sheffield, researching the body as document across digital culture, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, performativity, and heritage institutions.
Her artistic practice explores the body as both material and document, with interests spanning identity, representation, memory, technology, and the ways bodies accumulate meaning through their social and cultural contexts. Her work has been exhibited in juried exhibitions and published in Santa Clara Review. Her current artistic practice focuses primarily on private commissions.
She has accumulated an arguably unnecessary number of academic disciplines along the way, as well as qualifications from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET). She has travelled to 26 countries and remains interested in learning things simply because they are interesting—a habit that has proved remarkably effective at producing both degrees and books. She maintains a private library of more than 1,000 books, complete with a functioning catalogue and lending system, which is perhaps an unsurprising consequence of obtaining an MSc in Library and Information Science.
She is currently based in Oxford, England, where she continues to collect books, ideas, academic qualifications, and projects with limited evidence of an exit strategy.
Mary Helen currently resides with her partner, bear, and cat in Oxford, England.