Mark Wallinger
(b. 1959)
 

Mark Wallinger is an English artist. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation State Britain. His work Ecce Homo (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2001. Labyrinth (2013), a permanent commission for Art on the Underground, was created to celebrate 150 years of the London Underground. In 2018, the permanent work Writ in Water was realized for the National Trust to celebrate where Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wallinger

Half-Brother (Exit to Nowhere - Machiavellian)
1994-1995
Oil on Canvas
230 x 300 cm
Tate, London
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wallinger-half-brother-exit-to-nowhere-machiavellian-t07038

 

This is one of four paintings depicting hybrid racehorses which Wallinger made in 1994-5. The paintings are all titled Half Brother with individual subtitles, made up of the names of the two horses from which the halves are taken, in parentheses to distinguish them and share a similar structure. Each consists of two abutting canvases bringing together the two halves of the horse. The horses are painted realistically in thin oil against a white ground. Wallinger derived the horses from photographs in the Jockey Club’s official record of thoroughbred stallions. He projected the photographs onto the large canvases and copied them. In each painting, the horse’s forequarters appear on the left panel and its hindquarters on the right. The bodies’ outlines connect only approximately at the point where the canvases join. Different colouring and variation in build between the horses’ halves result in incongruous blends. In Half Brother (Exit to Nowhere – Machiavellian) the horse’s head and shoulders are an ochre-brown, turning to black on its forelegs. The rear half of its body is a uniform rich, glossy black, broken only by a narrow white band above its left hoof. The painting’s title reflects on the significance of pedigree in horse breeding while the subtitle directs the work towards a particular reading.