how culture can shape society
Mark Wallinger
Mark Wallinger is the main inspiration for my final piece layout of protest-esque panels. I chose Wallinger because of his respect and appreciation for protests in an art form. His piece ‘state Britain’ is the protest type scene I aim to create. His raw exposure to the crisis which he is portraying shows how important the issue is to groups of people. I aim to incorporate this in the form of the BLM protests that took place in May and June of this year.
Mark Wallinger (born 1959) is a British artist, best known for State Britain (2007), a recreation at Tate Britain of Brian Haw's protest display outside Parliament. He won the Turner Prize in 2007 for his work state Britain. He is a studio holder at the Bomb Factory Art Foundation in the Archway, North London.
"Where There's Muck" (1985) consists of ten rectangular pieces of plywood affixed to the gallery wall, over which the word ‘Albion’ has been spray-painted in large blue letters. The panels are of different sizes and are arranged in an irregular horizontal formation, with some overlapping each other. A single sheet of corrugated iron occupies the centre of this arrangement and appears to have been attached to the wall after the other elements, for it is positioned over a part of the spray-painted word.
"Where There’s Muck"
"Where There’s Muck" was created by the British artist Mark Wallinger in 1985, the year he completed a master’s degree in fine art at Goldsmiths College in London. It formed part of his first solo exhibition in London, held at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery in 1986. The plywood panels used in the work were taken from packing boxes at the left-wing bookshop Collett's on Charing Cross Road, London, where Wallinger worked between 1981 and 1988. The artist based the figure on the iron sheet on an image he discovered in an agricultural history book of a man employed to work as a human scarecrow in the nineteenth century.
"State Britain"
State Britain (2007) is a multi-part installation that accurately recreates the protest camp set up by peace campaigner Brian Haw in Parliament Square, London from 2001 onwards. First presented as the Duveen Commission at Tate Britain in January 2007, Wallinger's installation consists of a meticulous reconstruction of over 600 weather-beaten banners, photographs, peace flags and messages from well-wishers that had been amassed by haw over five years from 2001 to 2006. Faithful in every detail, each section of Haw’s peace camp – from the makeshift tarpaulin shelter and tea-making area to the profusion of hand-painted placards and teddy bears wearing peace-slogan t-shirts – has been painstakingly replicated. When first displayed, State Britain was configured as one long line (approximately forty-three metres in length), which accurately copied the way haw’s protest camp was displayed along the pavement opposite the Houses of Parliament.