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Re: mark wallingers big horse ebbsfleet

From:     Georg Büchner
Category: Art
Date:     13 February 2009
Time:     01:39 PM

Review:

I don't rate Mark Hudsons review in the TellyGiraffe, I'm pleased that he is generally in approval
of Mark Wallingers Skills as (in my opinion) the best of the yba squad, proving to have out matched
the canny Hirst, who may be the wealthy idiot he portrays himself to be or that he allows the media
to cast him as, Emin may or may not be the victim come heroine who sold her wounds only to die from
lack of idea's after the publicly applied tourniquet . When I think of Hirsts success I'm bound to
consider them against the sheer wholesale magic of Mark Wallinger, I'm not as astonished by the
cleverness of Hirst as I am by his ability to sell himself - that is clever! Wallinger by comparison
is only an artist who is not afraid to examine anything even the big financial high that leads Hirst
around by his nose, forcing him to apologise to wealthy America when he propounds about the twin
towers. Wallinger bought a racehorse and entered it in the Grand National, but he did'nt turn up on
the day with Kieth Allen and the Blurred Crowd. The prevoius correspondent mentions Banksey, thats
interesting but Wallingers ideas leave Banksey where it began - in the school playground with A
levels and "rebellious" skate boarding gear. Wallingers Turner Prize submission might have been a
belly laugh for Mark Hudson and his Torygiraffe toffs, I like that but I thought it full of pathos,
I did'nt laugh. Wallinger's Ecce Homo in Trafalgar Squares fourth plinth was so brilliantly
understated (The human scale Jesus) that Antony Gormless is now able to ponce it with his own
submission to the fourth plinth, except Gormless is adding you, the proles for whom he has an
obvious loathing. That's just what you'd expect from some self obsessed geek who bases his public
profile on Gordon Sumner (Sting), I bet he likes Coldplay too.
To respond to Mark Hudsons criticsm in the referred link, Mark Wallinger did use Stubb's
Whistlejacket as the basis for one of his own works, Whistlejacket is a rampant equine pose,
Wallinger did something very interesting with negative and positive's, the thing is about Wallinger,
he is an Essexian without any of the Eminesque victim predisposition in his practice, he is one of
the very few artists who thinks like an artist, he will look at something and make you see it the
way he does and its usually very different and often very resonant with layers of meaning -
intellectual but not inaccessable, you have to trust that the new Ebbsfleet Horse will look amazing,
quietly amazing.
Check out Wallingers early video pieces; Angel and be glad that the likes of Wallinger, Sarah Lucas
and Yinka Shonibare continue to be brilliant whilst Hirst, Gormley, Emin and Mrs Jay Joplin wander
from page to page confessing all...


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