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From: Hevelepter Category: Art Date: 19 January 2007 Time: 06:52 AM Review: The difficulties of holding an objective position are well documented throughout our culture, politics and art become particularly unstable because of the widely differing political standpoints of artist practitioners on politics. These standpoints range from a refusal to acknowledge any political connection to the arts, some political content in the arts and art as a wholly political action/ outcome. Mark Wallinger possesses a superbly innate ability as an artist to adapt an existing situational item into something with an extended, often ascended meaning. I am aware that a great amount of art posesses this ability but it is the particular choices that Wallinger makes that establishes his ability to rise from a cyclic polemic tension and bring an extraordinary humanistic parable, to the vast majority of his works. Mark Wallingers works of art, particularly those with a performative element but not exclusively so, are imbued with a scale that is of a societal vs individual perspective, "scale" is a key element in the analysis of his work. By contrast, the new installation of Mark Wallingers work could consider the scale of this lowly construct, a Protesters Shelter, and a touchstone of dissent on a very socio-personalised level. In the face of the governing authorities and its train of media the original protest is absorbed into the polemic tension and a moral dimension, the original protester is refused his democratic right to dissent outside Parliament for reasons which are probably spurious, however the scale of the powers required for such a manoeuver are indeed comparitively breathtaking. The huge attendances for the anti Iraq war march were not regarded sympathetically by the government and this was percieved on an individual basis as the first real slap in the face for an electorate deferring consent as most electorates inevitably do. The comparitive scale in terms of power between the individual and, in this example, the New Labour government or more succinctly, the prime minister are exemplified by Mark Wallingers presentation and draw the attention of a wide array of corruptions and truth(s). Comparisons to previous governments are somewhat diluted but by no means without basis, however, the New Labour government is unique in its ability to avoid and reconfigure any notions of morality and the actual qualities of its own political boundaries and this is at odds with a government that professes to be right wing, left wing etc. The Falklands were percieved as a colonial possesion where as Iraq was attacked, seemingly as a response to, or at least, in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombing in New York. The powerful piece by Wallinger at the Tate is , for many, a bastion of dissent in a society that is in every way measured and recorded, morally evaluated by immoral attitudes, attributed with unrequested identities and in defiance of all notions of consent. Interestingly, Damien Hirst withdrew his statement about the art ramifications of 9/11 Trade Towers in realising, perhaps that such a statement fails to present the virtues of human scale, governments and individuals are capable of inhuman as well as dehumanising acts and these are percieved like so much of our contemporary society; too inhumanely large, overwhelming excessive - in reference to many of Hirsts works, Wallinger by comparison is so very subtle, so very succinct.