Mark Wallinger

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Mark Wallinger bigraphy, stories - British sculptor

Mark Wallinger : biography

1959 –

Mark Wallinger (born 1959) is a British artist, best known for his sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, Ecce Homo (1999), and State Britain (2007), a recreation at Tate Britain of Brian Haw’s protest display outside parliament. He won the Turner Prize in 2007.Higgins, Charlotte. , The Guardian, 3 December 2007. Retrieved 3 December 2007. In October 2010, he and 100 other leading artists signed an open letter to the Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt protesting against cutbacks in the arts – he created a new work, "Reckless", for the protest.Peter Walker, "," The Guardian, October 1, 2010.

Life and career

Mark Wallinger was born in Chigwell, Essex. His formative schooling, from the age of 11, was undertaken at West Hatch High School, Chigwell, Essex. He first studied art at the Chelsea School of Art and later at Goldsmiths College where he was also a tutor from 1986. He exhibited throughout the 1980s, and later showed work in the Young British Artists II show at Charles Saatchi’s gallery in 1993 and at the Royal Academy’s Sensation exhibition in 1997. In 2000, a retrospective of his work, Credo, was exhibited at Tate Liverpool.

Early work

Wallinger’s early work is noted for its social commentary, often focusing on class (social), royalty and nationalism. These works are often paintings, although by the 1990s he was beginning to use a wider range of techniques, which have continued to feature in his work since.

In 1991, Wallinger exhibited a series of full length portrait paintings of the homeless called "Capital" at the ICA in London that were bought by Charles Saatchi and later exhibited at his gallery along with Wallinger’s life size paintings of racehorses.

Up until 1995, sport as a nexus for English national obsessions was a frequent topic of his work. In 1994 Wallinger appropriated an entire international football match at Wembley Stadium by being photographed with a large Union Jack banner with his name emblazoned on it. As a state flag the Union Flag has superiority to the Cross of St. George that most England football team fans display.

His 1995 Turner Prize nomination was largely thanks to his work of the previous year, A Real Work Of Art. This was actually a racehorse, which the racing fan Wallinger had bought and named "A Real Work Of Art" with a view to entering it in races and therefore causing this "art" to be piped into bookmakers up and down the country. It would thus be a further development of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. As things turned out, however, the horse was injured, and only ran one race.

Later work

Wallinger’s later work appears to have largely turned away from his earlier preoccupations, instead apparently focusing on religion and death and the influence of William Blake. "Angel" is a video played in reverse showing the artist walking backwards at the bottom of the down escalator at Angel Underground Station while reciting the opening lines of the Gospel of John in the King James Bible. At the conclusion of the video the music of Zadok the Priest that forms part of the British Coronation ceremony can be heard as Wallinger ‘ascends’ up the stairs. No Man’s Land, a show at the Whitechapel Gallery included several works on these subjects. Threshold to the Kingdom (2000), for example, is a slow motion video of people coming through automatic double doors at international arrivals at an airport. The video is accompanied by a recording of the famous Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. Wallinger has said that the title might be taken as a double meaning: arrival at the United Kingdom, but also at the kingdom of heaven, with a security guard playing the part of St. Peter.

As well as traditional religion, Wallinger’s work has sometimes referenced myths. Ghost (2001) is a negative print of George Stubbs’ famous horse painting Whistlejacket that has had a horn added to its head, thus turning it into a unicorn. Originally planned as a full scale painting, time constraints meant the piece was manipulated entirely in Photoshop from high quality side scans. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space (2001) takes a more modern myth as its subject – it is a life-sized mirrored model of the TARDIS from Doctor Who which at certain angles seems to blend into its environment.