Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger has created eight new collages for #100NHSROOMS, the series is title ‘Other Space’. The development of collage and montage is generally dated from early 20th century cubism and surrealism but it has long been a playground for everyone. It is as playful a medium for the viewer as much as the artist. Like sampling in music, each element has a hooky element – the edit still retains the atmosphere of its original context but at the same time is free to riff and disrupt, augment and influence. The fact that images are used as objects as much as for their associative or representational origins gives them leave to be both themselves and play a part in creating a totally ‘other ‘ space, an elsewhere for the imagination to wander.

Wallinger said of his donation: “In this terrible crisis it is hard to express the depth of our gratitude to all who work for the NHS. I was delighted to be able to make something to #100NHSRooms and was mindful of the need for a space for respite and contemplation.”

Mark Wallinger, Other Spaces, 2020, Collage on paper

Mark Wallinger, Other Spaces installed in Royal London Hospital Radiology Common Room

Mark Wallinger, born Chigwell, UK, 1959, has created some of the most subtly intelligent and influential artworks of the last thirty years. Wallinger is known for his career-long engagement with ideas of power, authority, artifice and illusion. Using epic narratives, lyrical metaphors and ardent punning, the artist interleaves the mythological, the political and the everyday. His work has dealt with religion, nationalism and class, explored urgent social issues. Public commissions are central to Wallinger’s practice, the most recent being ‘Writ in Water,’ a monumental installation to commemorate the sealing of the Magna Carta commissioned by the National Trust for Runnymede, England, and ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ a major sculpture for the London School of Economics. In 2013, Wallinger created ‘Labyrinth,’ a permanent commission to celebrate their 150th anniversary of the London Underground that spans all 270 stations on the network.

Wallinger was first nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, and won it in 2007 for his installation ‘State Britain’, an exact replica of peace campaigner Brian Haw’s protest camp in London’s Parliament Square. ‘Ecce Homo’ 1999, a life-sized sculpture of Jesus Christ, was the first work to occupy the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. Wallinger represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001.