Mark Wallinger - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Wednesday, October 13, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Koury Wingate Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Tate Liverpool, Mark Wallinger: Credo, 20 October - 23 December 2000

  • Catalogue Essay

    Mark Wallinger's multi-media practice investigates ideas of class, nationalism and social stereotypes, and how history shapes contemporary thinking. Through a kind of social commentary, his work captures the peculiar, often elusive but nonetheless fundamental aspects of British contemporary society.
    The present work, Booty from 1987, addresses the subject of British rule in India and the introduction there of rail transport in the 1850s under the supervision of the East India Company. The curious assemblage of objects comprises an umbrella, a velvet table cloth, a model railway and a hollow elephant foot arranged in a humourous yet poignant tableau and evokes the yoking together of two very different cultures. The use of what were once more familiar household objects is typical of Wallinger's interest in examining the role the domestic plays in the shaping of history and contemporary society.
    "Mark Wallinger's practice maps how these changes shape the society of which he is part. He describes a world where the orders of the past may decaying, but our profound need for symbolic order and a means of making sense remains; made perhaps greater by this slow retreat, and how this finds expressions in our lived experience, our everyday life, and how this desire can conjure up ghosts... He has refused to repeat himself or commodify his expression into productions designed to fulfil the expectations of an audience or marketplace. His work talks about how we might construct meaning in the world that is evolving around us, how we relate to the past that is fading behind us, about loss, about ghosts, and how the future might be imagined."
    R. Grayson, 'A Number of Disappearances', in Mark Wallinger, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland, 2008

131

Booty

1987
Umbrella, table, velvet cloth, model railway, elephant foot.
Installation dimensions: 172.8 x 106.7 x 106.7 cm (68 x 42 x 42 in).

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠

Contemporary Art Day Sale

14 October 2010
London