For Mark Wallinger’s solo exhibition at the Pavilion, he created the effect of stepping into an illusionary landscape. Visitors to the Biennale’s Giardini grounds were first confronted with his new site-specific work, Facade (2001). Wallinger covered the front of the British Pavilion with a to-scale colour photograph of the Pavilion itself printed on vinyl coated polyester and hung from scaffolding.
Another of Wallinger’s works placed outside the Pavilion, hanging from the flagpole, was Oxymoron, which is the British Union Jack re-worked in the colours of the Irish tri-colour flag. The colours red and blue of the Union Jack are changed to green and orange, which are complementary colours on the painter's colour wheel, and the artist was also making reference to tragic situation in Ireland at the time.
Wallinger works across a range of media and he showed recent and new works including sculpture, video, painting and photography in his Pavilion exhibition. On entering the main gallery, the viewer met another life-size piece, the sculpture of Jesus entitled Ecce Homo, which was first shown on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London in 2000.
Ghosts (2001), now part of Tate’s collection, shows Wallinger’s fascination with British horseracing traditions. This print in a light box shows a scanned reproduction of a well-known 18th century oil painting, Whistlejacket (c.1762) by British artist George Stubbs, but the image had been manipulated with the addition of a horn on its head to create a mythical creature.
Doctor Who’s Tardis inspired one of the works in the Pavilion that referenced British cultural phenomenon. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space (2001) is a replica of a police box with a mirrored surface, which, like Facade, playfully manipulated the visitors.
