theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Mark Wallinger

For his new show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger will be unveiling a first: a life-sized, three-dimensional "self-portrait". But it won't be a straightforward representation of the 50-year-old conceptual artist. It will, instead, be a representation of himself as the letter "I" in Times New Roman. His Vauxhall studio, in South London, is filled with pictures of "self-portraits" of the artist as a series of letters. It is also filled with the debris of current and recent projects: bits of string and deflating balloons; scrappy reproductions of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X; poster-sized pictures of sleeping commuters downloaded from the Internet; images of his Ebbsfleet horse that will eventually greet Eurostar passengers arriving from the Continent; and quite a few mirrors.

For his new show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger will be unveiling a first: a life-sized, three-dimensional "self-portrait". But it won't be a straightforward representation of the 50-year-old conceptual artist. It will, instead, be a representation of himself as the letter "I" in Times New Roman. His Vauxhall studio, in South London, is filled with pictures of "self-portraits" of the artist as a series of letters. It is also filled with the debris of current and recent projects: bits of string and deflating balloons; scrappy reproductions of Velázquez’s Pope Innocent X; poster-sized pictures of sleeping commuters downloaded from the Internet; images of his Ebbsfleet horse that will eventually greet Eurostar passengers arriving from the Continent; and quite a few mirrors.