Artist Mark Wallinger

Image was taken form the internet.

 

Moving on from “Angle” the documentary tapped into Mark Wallinger installations, in this case “Prometheus” (1999) a two part installation that includes both video installation, objects, and image. What I liked about “Prometheus” was the reference to “Night of the Hunter,” depicted by a pair of huge fist with the words LOVE and Hate written on then which happens to dominate the walls in the exhibition space. Obviously drawing parallels from the preacher in the film “Prometheus” plays around with the ideas of god and death. An execution chair is stuck to the wall while a huge write ring buzzes in the foreground framing it. A birds eye view is created giving you God’s perspective.
Honestly I didn’t entirely understand “Prometheus,” but liked it for its quirks such as the “Night of the Hunter” reference for example. What I did found interesting was after the documentary when Leah my tutor was discussing the piece and pointed out how the metal ring that made the buzzing sound related to aura in the sense of energy and wave lengths. Especially in how Mark Wallinger used electricity to create energy and more importantly sound.

 

 

Mark Wallinger Prometheus (still) 1999 Southampton City Art Gallery, projected video installation, continuous video loop, edition 7 of 10., variable, the artist courtesy: Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London

 

Wallinger's JC was the only work in competition at Venice that actually had something to say to the city. His Christ could have stepped out of a 15th-century painting. Ecce Homo looked powerful in the British Pavilion, and would have been a moving sight in St Mark's Square.
Wallinger's double eccentricity - displaying something as culturally specific as the Tardis and as accessible as a statue of Christ - reflects the two sides of British art. When historians assess the British art boom of the past decade, what will they say? That it was great art? Even good art? In the end, this does not matter so much as the fact that these artists attempted to break out of the ghetto of contemporary art, its introspective waves of fashion and spurious adulation of this or that inflated artistic name, and speak to a real public about real things. Maybe the means used were crude, the themes melodramatic, but art has gained a public voice here.