Mark Wallinger

Lives and works in London

Mark Wallinger is one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists. Ecce Homo (1999-2000) was the first work to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, and was later shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001. His work Labyrinth, from 2013, is a major and permanent installation for Art on the Underground, commisoned to celebrate 150 years of the London underground. In 2015, the artist created a series of monumental paintings that reference his own body. His height — or arm span — is the basis of the canvas size, they are exactly this measurement in width and double in height. Created by sweeping black paint-laden hands across the canvas in active, freeform gestures, the id Paintings bear the evidence of their making and of the artist’s performed encounter with the surface.

In 2007, he won the prestigious Turner Prize for his work State Britain, a sprawling installation that meticulously recreated peace campaigner Brian Haw’s Parliament Square protest in Tate Britain. Selected solo exhibitions include Serpentine Gallery, London; Tate Liverpool; Vienna Secession;
Museum for Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Palais Des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Museum De Pont, Netherlands; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Wallinger’s Ecce Homo (1999-2000) was the first work to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Wallinger represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. His work is included in the collections of many leading international museums including Tate, MoMA New York, and Centre Pompidou Paris.

 

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