tue 08/10/2024

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Mark Wallinger | reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Mark Wallinger

theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Mark Wallinger

The Turner Prize-winner talks politics, multi-tasking and meeting Dennis Hopper

Mark Wallinger is fascinated by the idea of 'mirroring' and has recently ventured into unconventional self-portraiturePortrait images © Jillian Edelstein
For his new show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger will be unveiling a first: a life-sized, three-dimensional "self-portrait". But it won't be a straightforward representation of the 50-year-old conceptual artist. It will, instead, be a representation of himself as the letter "I" in Times New Roman. His Vauxhall studio, in South London, is filled with pictures of "self-portraits" of the artist as a series of letters. It is also filled with the debris of current and recent projects: bits of string and deflating balloons; scrappy reproductions of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X; poster-sized pictures of sleeping commuters downloaded from the Internet; images of his Ebbsfleet horse that will eventually greet Eurostar passengers arriving from the Continent; and quite a few mirrors.

For his new show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger will be unveiling a first: a life-sized, three-dimensional "self-portrait". But it won't be a straightforward representation of the 50-year-old conceptual artist. It will, instead, be a representation of himself as the letter "I" in Times New Roman. His Vauxhall studio, in South London, is filled with pictures of "self-portraits" of the artist as a series of letters. It is also filled with the debris of current and recent projects: bits of string and deflating balloons; scrappy reproductions of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X; poster-sized pictures of sleeping commuters downloaded from the Internet; images of his Ebbsfleet horse that will eventually greet Eurostar passengers arriving from the Continent; and quite a few mirrors.

I’m hell to live with and I moan, but I do generally come up with the goods. And thematically, different projects feed into one another

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