Mark Wallinger

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2008 Triennial Map

Folk Stones, 2008. Photograph © Mark Wallinger

Title: Folk Stones
Location: West End of The Leas between the Flower Clock and the Bandstand

Mark Wallinger’s Folk Stones at first appears like an almost banal numbering exercise, a “significant yet pointless act” as he put it, recalling the labour of a modern-day Sisyphus. Yet the precise number of beach pebbles collected and laid out into a massive square reveals a profound underpinning: 19,240 individually numbered stones stand for the exact number of British soldiers killed on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The work is inspired by the one million soldiers who left from Folkestone harbour to fight on the battlefields of France and Flanders.

About Mark

Photo: Charlie Hopkinson

Born Chigwell, Essex, 1959. Lives and works in London.

Mark Wallinger is one of Britain's foremost contemporary artists. He is perhaps best known for Ecce Homo, a life-size sculpture of Christ that occupied the 'Fourth Plinth' in London's Trafalgar Square in 1999.

Since the mid-1980s Mark Wallinger’s primary concern has been to establish a valid critical approach to the ‘politics of representation and the representation of politics’ and has often explored issues of the responsibilities of individuals and those of society in his work. Wallinger has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.

Recent solo shows include

Kunstmuseum Aarau - Switzerland 2008
State Britain, MAC/VAL - Vitry-sur-Sein, France 2008
Mark Wallinger, Kunstverein Braunschweig, - Braunschweig 2007
State Britain, Tate Britain - London 2007
The Human Figure in Motion, Donald Young Gallery – Chicago 2007
The End/ A ist für Alles, Anthony Reynolds Gallery – London 2006
Threshold to the Kingdom, Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia, National Gallery – Prague 2006
Mark Wallinger, Museo de Arte Carillo Gil - Mexico City 2005
Easter - Hangar Bicocca, Milan 2005
Sleeper, Neue Nationalgalerie – Berlin 2004
Presence 4: Mark Wallinger, Speed Art Museum - Louisville, Kentucky 2004
No Man’s Land, Whitechapel Gallery – London 2001
Mark Wallinger, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale - 2001

Recent group exhibitions include

On Time: The East Wing Collection VIII, The Courtauld Institute of Art - London 2008
The Turner Prize, Tate Liverpool – Liverpool 2007
Munster Sculpture Project - Münster 2007
"Timer 01 intimita/ Intimacy", Fondazione La Triennale di Milano / Triennale-Bovisa - Milan 2007
Human Game (curated by Francesco Bonami), Stazione Leopolda – Florence 2006
Aftershock: Contemporary British Art 1990-2006, China Art Gallery - Beijing and tour 2006
When Humour Becomes Painful, Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst – Zurich 2005
The Experience of Art, Italian Pavillion, La Biennale di Venezia – Venice 2005
Miradas y Conceptos, MEIAC, Badajoz 2005
The World is a Stage, Mori Art Museum - Tokyo 2005
Between above and below, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies - New York 2004
Warum! Ebenbild – Abbild – Selbstbild, Martin - Gropius Bau – Berlin 2003

Wallinger was awarded the Turner Prize in 2007. In 2001 he represented Britain at the 49th Venice Biennale and was also awarded the DAAD Fellowship.

See Mark Wallinger's work
www.anthonyreynolds.com