Mick Hartley

The winner of this year’s Turner Prize has been announced:

Mark Wallinger has been named the winner of the Turner Prize for his replica of the one-man anti-war protest in Parliament Square, State Britain…

“I am indebted to all those people who contributed to the making of State Britain,” said Wallinger.

For the exhibition he chose to display a film of him roaming the National Gallery in Berlin in a bear suit…

He was favourite to win the prize for his £90,000 installation, which recreates everything from Brian Haw’s protest in Parliament Square in 2001.

Every detail was copied from his tarpaulin shelter and tea-making area to the messages of support and hand-painted placards.

It is said he employed 15 people for six months to make State Britain.

“Brian Haw is a remarkable man who has waged a tireless campaign against the folly and hubris of our government’s foreign policy,” Wallinger said.

“For six-and-a-half years he has remained steadfast in Parliament Square, the last dissenting voice in Britain. Bring home the troops, give us back our rights, trust the people,” he added.

The jury commended Wallinger, 48, for its “immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance”.

They said: “The work combines a bold political statement with art’s ability to articulate fundamental human truths.”

Bring home the troops? In 2001? Not only the last dissenting voice in Britain, but a prophet too. And a truther, as it happens. Oh yes, a remarkable man indeed.

You may wish to read more about the talented Mr Wallingford. This is what they say at the Tate website:

Mark Wallinger’s work is noted for its succinct social commentary and political resonance. His early work explored the values of contemporary British society, in particular national identity. His focus subsequently expanded to address themes of death and religion. Despite dealing with such expansive themes, his work is often characterised by a lightness of touch that belies the serious and multifaceted nature of the subject matter.

But what about the bear? “For the exhibition he chose to display a film of him roaming the National Gallery in Berlin in a bear suit.” All is explained:

Sleeper records a live performance in which the artist, alone and dressed in a bear suit, occupied Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie for ten consecutive nights. The museum’s location enables a diversity of themes to converge, creating a uniquely complex and unsettling work. The bears in the nearby historic Zoo are doomed never to reproduce, the possibility of their procreation in captivity preordained and controlled by man. Fortified by a culture of surveillance and paranoia, Berlin during the Cold War was physically, politically and socially divided. The ‘sleepers’, or double agents, blended into their surroundings by sporting plausible disguises. Wallinger, a Briton in a foreign city, disguises himself as a bear – the heraldic emblem of Berlin – an appropriation in which he becomes both ‘bear’ and simultaneously not ‘bear’.

Wallinger has described how the idea of a divided realm exists within his subconscious, shaped by a German fairy tale in which a prince is transformed into a bear. In Sleeper the Marxist dictum in which history returns first as tragedy then as farce is wryly expressed. Allegory, the repression of memory, and the mutability of national identity combine to offer a meditative exploration of the language of representation, as well as an examination of the nature of perception itself.

Sadly we remain unenlightened as to the name of the bear. Perhaps that’s just as well.

The BBC have a video of a cleaner at Tate Liverpool, Vera Montgomery, being questioned about Wallinger’s masterpiece. It seems that the complexities of Wallinger’s vision – the extraordinary power of his bear/not-bear dialectic – have passed the poor dear completely by. “To me it’s just a guy dressed up in a bear outfit”. How one cherishes the simplicity of the working class!