Bill Oppenheim, July 3-The Arts Scene We chatted with them for a while, and after all, I am a journalist, so I asked a lot of the usual questions-- where are you from, what do you do, etc.? The longer I talked to Mark the more I found myself trying to keep up. This fellow, I said to myself, is no ordinary contemporary artist--whatever that might be. Huh, I THE ARTS SCENE (Continued) finally said; I think my TDN readers might be interested A picnic at Royal Ascot is the equivalent of tailgating in your story; can we speak next week, I asked? at an American football game, with a few significant Absolutely. differences--it=s a lot less casual, considering people So of course, as we do now, I googled him and coming and going from Ascot picnics are heading for looked him up in Wikipedia. First major shock--I thought the Royal Enclosure, so the prevailing he must have been about 35 when I met him dress is top hat and tails, and so on (to at the picnic. He=s actually 54, which means read Liesl King=s story about Ascot he has a lot more history than I first assumed; picnics from Friday, June 21, click here). and what a very interesting history it is. Mark Another significant difference is that you is, without doubt, one of Britain=s leading don=t see portable charcoal and gas grills contemporary artists, with a string of in the parking lots. exhibitions, awards, and achievements big Though Liesl=s story was written about enough to fill a book. In fact, there is such a the picnics in Car Park 1, my own Ascot book, entitled (strangely), Mark Wallinger, tailgating experience invariably consists Mark & Aleda written by Martin Herbert and published in of the Wednesday=s Patrick Cooper/BBA Ireland picnic in Car Park 2, just about directly across 2011 by Thames & Hudson, London. The from the racecourse main entrance. Though often the front-jacket blurb refers to it as Athe first comprehensive cast of characters is similar from year to year, you can monograph on Mark=s work. It spans his entire career to bet every year some new and interesting characters date and is extensively illustrated with images of nearly cross the stage. This year, without doubt, the most all the artist=s work.@ The front-piece of the book interesting new character at The Patrick Picnic was the reproduces his Ink on Paper drawing from 1997, on Turner Prize-winning contemporary artist, Mark display in the Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London, Wallinger, pictured here with his friend, the digital entitled AMark Wallinger is Innocent.@ This is a conservationist (uh-huh) Aleda Fitzpatrick. contemporary artist with a sense of humor. Oppenheim cont. A native of Chigwell, in Essex (and otherwise best known as the setting for the British sitcom Birds of a Feather), Mark first came to prominence in the mid-1980s, having studied at the Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmith=s College in London. Originally an accomplished painter, albeit always with a whimsical “The final tally on the 2013 North American and European 2-year-old sales: gross up by 17% and average up by 20% from last year (bodes well for the yearling edge and contemporary feel, Wallinger quickly sales). With 3% fewer catalogued and sold. Compared to pre-crash 2008, the expanded his repertoire to include video, photography, number catalogued has fallen by 17%, the number sold by 7%, while the gross is multimedia productions, and sculpture. His subject now just 1.4% below that of 2008, and the average is up 7%. Combined with matter ranges across politics, religion (he won the first-half mixed sales, gross revenues at the end of June were 15% below those in Turner Prize in 2007 for >State Britain,= a recreation of 2008.” – Bill Oppenheim peace campaigner Brian Haw=s protest against, first, Iraq sanctions, and then against the Iraq war which took place in Parliament Square between 2001-2006)-- and horse racing. Between 1992-1995, Mark, who has been fascinated by horse racing for as long as he can remember, produced a series of works around the world of horse racing and, believe me, horse racing has never looked quite like this. Mark did some research and found that the surname which had the highest number of registered colors at that time was Brown. He did a series of paintings in 1993, called ABrown=s,@ of all the colors registered by people with the surname >Brown.= He noted that most of the Browns avoided the color brown, and further noted that this work Awas a nice joke on painting, that if you mix all the colours on your palette you get brown.@ In 1994, he bought a filly by TOTAL US AND EUROPEAN 2YO SALES AS OF JULY 1, 2013 Keen (full brother to Kris and Diesis) with a group of YEAR CAT RING SOLD %W/D %S/R %S/C GROSS AVG friends and he named her A Real Work of Art. For his 2013 4,332 3,279 2,564 24.3% 78.2% 59.2% $187,094,603 $72,970 own colors he chose, in honor of Emily Davison, the 2012 4,487 3,417 2,639 23.8% 77.2% 58.8% $160,218,095 $60,712 suffragette who threw herself in front of the King=s 2011 4,635 3,513 2,632 24.2% 74.9% 56.8% $144,960,265 $55,076 horse in 1913, the green, violet, and white of the 2010 4,124 3,249 2,413 21.2% 74.3% 58.5% $130,463,027 $54,067 2009 4,878 3,559 2,547 27.0% 71.6% 52.2% $132,966,122 $52,205 suffragette movement. A Real Work of Art eventually 2008 5,225 3,992 2,769 23.6% 69.4% 53.0% $189,719,108 $68,515 won a race in Germany as a 3-year-old in 1995, and produced a black-type winner there, Art Attack (Platini), in 2006. At the Tate Gallery in 1995, Wallinger displayed a video installation, lasting seven and a half minutes, on four video monitors, entitled >Royal Ascot, 1994.= He had recorded the Royal Procession during each of the then-four days at Ascot in 1994. Wallinger=s footage showed, in Martin Herbert=s words, a Asurreally identical@ event--as Wallinger says, AExcept that the Queen is This is one of four paintings wearing a different dress or depicting hybrid racehorses hat. The Duke of Edinburgh which Wallinger made in rather unnervingly doffs his hat at the same point, every TOTAL US AND EUROPEAN 1ST HALF SALES 1994-5. The paintings are all day.@ Also in 1994-95, YEAR CAT RING SOLD %W/D %S/R %S/C GROSS AVG titled Half Brother with Wallinger produced a series 2013 8,105 6,327 4,783 21.9% 75.6% 59.0% $245,091,062 $51,242 2012 7,893 6,196 4,702 21.5% 75.9% 59.6% $211,479,032 $44,976 individual subtitles of huge oil on canvas 2011 8,342 6,508 4,761 22.0% 73.2% 57.1% $180,574,663 $37,928 Mark Wallinger photo >diptychs= called 2010 7,907 6,310 4,427 20.2% 70.2% 56.0% $163,146,438 $36,853 AHalf-Brother.@ In one panel, 2009 9,186 6,791 4,871 26.1% 71.7% 53.0% $176,378,535 $36,210 he has painted in front half of Unfuwain and the back 2008 10,782 8,120 5,749 24.7% 70.8% 53.3% $282,002,417 $49,052 half of his half-brother Nashwan; in another, the front half of Exit to Nowhere, the back half of Machiavellian. Data compiled by Brianne Stanley Having >done= horse racing--in a way I=ve certainly never seen anything like before--Mark turned to other projects, including a two-week stint in a bear costume in a gallery in Berlin in 2004, and his Turner Prize-winning Brian Haw anti-war protest project in 2006-07. But he returned to the theme of the horse when he won the commission, in 2008, for the Ebbsfleet Landmark project. The project was to create something 50 meters high (about 164 feet) which would be positioned near Ebbsfleet, in Kent, which David Levene photo would welcome visitors to Britain. Mark=s winning submission was for a White Horse, which he felt would be appropriate for Kent for three reasons. First, from a semi-mythical invasion of what is now Kent in the 5th Century by the twin brothers Hengist (>stallion= in Old English) and Horsa (>horse=), in which the flag of the invaders included a white horse; second, that the white horse (possibly because of the above) is the symbol of Kent; and third, that Kent is well known for the white substance, chalk. Unfortunately, the ,12-,15 million White Horse is on Wallinger=s short list of Aunrealized@ projects. Shortly after he won the commission, the world economic meltdown intervened and funds to Arealize@ the project died up. While still working to find the necessary funds to bring the project to Ebbsfleet, Wallinger unveiled a life-size version of AThe White Horse@ outside the headquarters of the British Council on the Mall in London earlier this year. He was delighted to learn that the seat of the horse is now just about the color of denim, as a result of so many people in blue jeans climbing up to sit on it.