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BIOGRAPHY
EVENT BASED PROJECTS - WAYWARD CANON
MARK AERIAL WALLER
Born in High Wycombe, UK in 1969
Lives and works in London
My work operates in a space that surrounds or passes through the moving image. I set up situations for audiences to encounter the unknown, to move from feeling alienated to find joy in curiosity. In my work I place the ‘movie’ that I make in relation to the flow of what happens around it. I see my practice as reversal of the film industry; a conduit flowing from the viewers in the gallery, plunging down a hole to the crypt/archive, and out to the production process and its economics, politics and historical context, before finally spilling out onto the set, the street and the material reality that once was. I use the medium to encounter relative perceptions of existence, as well as making portraits of the people who are working on the film with me. So the ‘practice’ is about the wider concerns, our place in the universe as well as our connections with one another.
Waller’s whole approach is ‘wayward’ because it cleaves so thoroughly to the principle of displacement, and not simply of the temporal kind. He has sometimes been known to call his salon-type events “reinterpretations” of the films presented, but this tends to understate their radicality.
Yes, the films he shows are unhinged from those canons and contexts which normalise them and are effectively their guarantors – whether it is because they are dismembered (episodes of Batman and Fantomas in La Société des Amis de Judex), agglomerated (episodic television serials turned into epic, convivial theatre in The Sun Set and My Kleine Fassbinderbar), or admixed with other works (Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert expanded into the portmanteau disco experience of Simon and the Radioactive Flesh). But the Wayward Canon events are also notable for how the audience itself is also constituted eccentrically – or, as Waller puts it, “the way the audience might not realise it’s the audience.” Above all, Waller’s activities have gradually evinced the erosion of the distinction between his own work and these ‘secondary’, parasitic practices – in other words, it is his own work which is ultimately displaced, or transformed by its cross-fertilisation with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries.
This has little or nothing to do with the contemporary, modish frisson of artists posing as curators, and something to do with a more profoundly subversive sense – something Waller shares with David Lamelas, an otherwise very different artist – of the impossibility of delimiting a context, a horizon for interpretations.
(Mike Sperlinger, 'Alas they Never Did': Mark Aerial Waller's Reversions, The Flipside of Darkness (exhibition catalogue), pp. 6-13 Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw)
Recent solo presentations include El Canon Rebelde (2020) at CAAM, Gran Canaria, Yoga Horror at Tate Britain (2014) and Projection Apprentice at Mindaugas Triennial, the 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania (2012) and Kafe Pittoresk- L’Experience du Monde Visionnaire, (With Giles Round) Serpentine Gallery, London. Translations of his works exist in French, Italian, Spanish, Lithuanian, Turkish, Korean & Mandarin.
EDUCATION
1990-1993 Central Saint Martins College of Art, London. B.A.(Hons) Fine Art -Film & Video
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Mark Aerial Waller - The Wayward Canon, CAAM, Gran Canaria, Spain.
2018 Leave Nothing Behind But Your Footprints And Take Nothing But Your Time, Rodeo, London.
2018 Space Pursues Them, Encircles Them Digests Them, Daedalus Street, Athens, Greece. Wayward Canon.
2018 40 days at the Rhumba, Sad Disco Fantasia, Kunsthalle Oslo Wayward Canon.
2016 Party of the Flowers and Nightingales, Lothringer 13 Florida, Munich (event)
2015 Echo Chamber, Royal College of Art
2014 Yoga Horror, Tate Britain (performance event)
2013 Therese Desqueyroux/ Popcorn Casts, Piper Keys, London (event and exhibition)
2012 SO-LA, Cell Projects, London
2012 Offering Transmissions, Rodeo, Istanbul
2011 This isn’t Nelsons time it’s 1956 and it’s time to get out and leave this schtick, Outpost, Norwich,UK
2010 Resistance Domination Secret, Cell Projects, London
2010 The Cassiopeia Plan, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK
2008 (catalogue) Resistance Domination Secret, 0-60, ICA, London (event)
2008 Resistance Domination Secret, France-Fiction, Paris, France
2008 (catalogue) The Flipside of Darkness, CSW Ujazdowski Castle/Chlodna 25, Warsaw, Poland
2008 The Flipside of Darkness, South London Gallery, London
2004 Superpower – Dakar Chapter, Counter Gallery, London
2004 Reversion of The Beast Folk, T1+2 Artspace, London
1999 The Glow Boys Night, Lux Centre, London (event)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019 Curators’ Series #12 Hana Noorali & Lynton Talbot, David Roberts Art Foundation London.
2019 Out Score, Aixoni Sculpted Theatre, Athens, Greece, for the Onassis Foundation by Sozita Goudouna
2019 To Cite a Body, Sluice, London
2018 17x24 Everyday is a Good Day, magazin 4, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria
2016 Mille Feuilles, South London Gallery (performance with video, pattisserie and John Latham NOIT)
2016 The Shift- Eight Years of Flat Time House, Flat Time Ho, London
2016 Counterpoint, AKINCI gallery, Amsterdam
2015 Glow Boys, LUNGENGASSE, Koln
2015 Phantoms of the Avant-Garde, LUX and Cranford Collection, London
2015 The Sons of Temperance, Shapes and Forms, ICA, London, curated by Lucy Rose Bayley
2015 The Chicken and the Egg, the Chicken Rodeo, London
2014 Outside In, FRAC Aquitaine,Bordeaux, France
2013 Artist Film Club: Random Acts, ICA, London
2013 Douglasism Festival, National Press Gallery / Ilmin Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2012 Desire Paths, Caja Madrid, Barcelona
2012 All That Shines Ain’t No Gold, Rodeo, Istanbul
2012 Baltic Triennial, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania
2012 Superpower: Science Fiction in Africa, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
2011 Like the Fireflies, Nicoletta Rusconi, Milan
2011 More Soup & Tart, Barbican, London (sculptural performance)
2011 Whitley Arts Trail, Reading, UK
2010 Surreal House, Barbican, London (performance)
2010 (catalogue) Time Machine and Anywhere Door, IT Park Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2010 Have A Look Have A Look, Form Content, London
2010 Performing Presence, The National Centre for Contemporary Art, St Petersburg, Russia.
2010 A Bluebird in My Heart, National Gallery of Zimbabwe
2009 This place you see has no size at all..., Kadist Foundation, Paris
2009 (catalogue) Heaven, 2ndAthens Biennale, Greece, curated by Diana Baldon
2009 In Search of the Unknown The Netherlands Media Art Institute
2009 Interferencia, Museum of Health Sciences, Bogota, Colombia
2008 The Children of the Revolution, Rodeo, Istanbul, Turkey.
2008 (catalogue) L'art Contemporain en Europe, Experience Pommery #5, Reims, France
2008 If Tomorrow Never Comes, Rodeo, Istanbul, Turkey
2008 The Night of the One Thousand and One Videos, Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
2007 …San Palio Sinema, 1st Athens Biennale, Athens, Greece
2007 Batchelor Machines, Picture This, Bristol, UK (invitation by Rosalind Nashashibi)
2007 Top Floor, Platform Garanti for Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey
2007 (catalogue) You have Not Been Honest, Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy
2007 (British Council Touring exhibition)
2007 Strange Weather, NBK, Berlin, curated by Michelle Cotton
2006 (catalogue) Videozone 3, Centre for contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, curated by Stewart Comer
2006 Philip, science fiction novel writing project, Project, Dublin, curated by Mai Abu ElDahab
2006 selected for Manifesta 6, Nicosia, Cyprus
2005 (catalogue) Time Pop Artprojx, London
2005 Go Between Magazin 4, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria
2005 Pass the Time of Day Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
2005 ATOMICA Lombard-Fried Fine Arts, New York
2004 (catalogue) Biennale! Artist Film and Video Temporary Contemporary, London touring to China
2004 Reversion of the Beast Folk, 3 To The Power of 3,Institute Français, London,
2004 Publish and Be Damned Cubitt, London
2004 I’D Rather Jack S1 Artspace, Sheffield
2004 Concert in the Egg The Ship, London
2003 Changing Times Tate Britain, curated by Lucy Reynolds
2003 Wild Strawberries and Familiar Haunts Newman Popiashvili, New York
2003 Nurseryworld Jennifer Flay Gallery, Paris
2002 Aristotele`s Feiber,HEDAH, Maastricht, The Netherlands, (three person collaboration)
2001 (catalogue) Traversées, Musé d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, France
2001 New England Lux Gallery, London
2001 (catalogue) Encounters between here and there The Architecture Foundation, London
2000 Walking 1-10 Salon 3, London,
2000 The Sons of Temperance Konstmuseum Uppsala, Sweden,
1999 Grapeshot Bullseye Harvest Ataché Gallery, London, curated by Douglas Park
1998 (catalogue) ATOMIC Imperial College, London: Touring Exhibition with The Arts Catalyst
1997 (catalogue) ISLAS CAAM, Gran Canaria
1996 (catalogue) Life/Live (plummet) Musé d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, France
1996 Seethroughbrain Transmission Gallery, Glasgow
1996 Euthanasia plummet, London
1996 Prognosis plummet, London
1995 Knives & Rockets plummet, London
EVENT BASED PROJECTS –The Wayward Canon
2001 onwards Founder of The Wayward Cannon: An itinerant site specific micro-salon for critical engagement
and re-representation of cinema, The Wayward Canon adopts the mechanics of a performance or
happening.
2018 40 Days at the Rhumba, Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo.
2013 Therese Desqueyroux / Popcorn Casts, Piper Keys, London.
2011 Horror Yoga/Boundary Theory, Transmission, Glasgow touring to Hollywood cinemas, Norwich, presented by
LUX as an offsite project for Outpost, Norwich.
2009 Simon & The Radioactive Flesh-Plaka (with Giles Round), Marieke van Hal, Athens
2009 The Mantle, Betonsalon, Paris, part of "Real Vague", curated by Hans Askheim
2008 La Societé des Amis de Judex II, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerpen, Belgium
2007 La Societé des Amis de Judex II, FACT, Liverpool
2007 La Societé des Amis de Judex II, Tate Modern, London
2007 Simon & The Radioactive Flesh-Dalston (with Giles Round), LUX at Arcola Theatre, London
2007 Back to the Core, Platform Garanti, Istanbul, open publishing project with live performance and film.
2007 Chroma Key, CSW Ujazdowski Castle /Plan B, Warsaw, with spoken word by Douglas Park
2007 Simon and the Radioactive Flesh, CSW Ujazdowski Castle /Chlodna 25, Warsaw, Poland.
2007 Simon and the Radioactive Flesh (with Giles Round), Rotterdam Film Festival, NL
2006 Simon and the Radioactive Flesh (with Giles Round), Platform Garanti, Istanbul, Turkey
2004 La Societe des Amis de Judex, film and spatial montage aligning Apollinaire poetry, 60’s Batman and Louis
Feuillade’s ‘Judex’ with a smoke machine, Redux, London, 2005
2003 The Sun Set. A 15 hr screening/ micro-salon with mirror wall of US television epic, Sunset Beach, with
accompanying publication of drawings, poetry and critical essays. 1,000,000mph project space, London
2002 My Kleine Fassbinderbar, A 15 hour screening/ micro-salon with bar and mirrors, a monument to Fassbinder`s
television series, 'Berlin Alexanderplatz`, 5 Years, London
EVENT COLLABORATIONS WITH GILES ROUND
2009 Taverna Especial: Younes Baba Ali, AiM festival, Kssour Agafay, Marrakech, Morocco
Taverna Especial: Younes Baba Ali, Sketch, London
(Taverna Especial is a nomadic kitchen for the reception and contemplation of a singular artwork)
Kafe Pittoresk- L'Experience du Monde Visionnaire, Serpentine Gallery, London
(catalogue) Taverna Especial at Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London
2007 The Glittering Canon, Sketch, London
COLLECTIONS, RESIDENCIES &AWARDS
2017 Arts Council Collection (Phantom Avantgarde)
2017 Hospitalfield Artist Residency, Arbroath, Scotland
2009 Elephant Trust award
2009 FLAMIN award scheme, FILM LONDON
2009/10 Residency: Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK.
2007 Residency: Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2006/07 Residency: Platform Garanti, Istanbul.
2006 Arts Council England : Professional Development Award
2006 Residency: Artist Links in Xi’an, China, supported by British Council and ACE
organised through Triangle Arts Network and Watershed Art Space, Xi’an
CURATING
2014 Whitstable Biennale film programme, Video exhibition exploring active spectatorship through exclusion. Drawing a relationship between minimalism and 'body as place' video art practices of Acconci and Export in relation to youtube fetish video performance and video as de-centred object in Simon Martin's Carlton(2009)
2007-2009 Creative Director, Yama public video screen, Istanbul. Commissioner of new works for public exhibition, production adviser, PR and marketing in Istanbul and international art press, event coordination for off-site receptions, board member (to present day).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2018 Benthien,C., Lau,J. & Marxsen, M. The Literariness of Media Art, Routledge
2013 Top Ten, Art Forum, September issue
2011 From Berkeley to Berkeley, Mai Abu ElDahab (Ed.), Sternberg Press.
Community without Propinquity, Milton Keynes Gallery/Inheritance Projects.
Life in Film, Frieze magazine May issue.
The Moving Image in a post-internet world Ward Magazine with Ed Atkins, James Richards and Gil Leung.
2008 L’Art Contemporain en Europe, Beaux Arts editions, Paris.
The Flipside of Darkness (monograph), CSW Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland
Simon and the Radioactive Flesh–zine, Wayward Canon publications, London (with Giles Round)
2007 You Have Not Been Honest, British Council Catalogue
Fresh Moves, Tank TV publication
2006 ENDextEND, collaboration with Loris Greaud, Editions HYX, Paris (reproduction)
2005 Guestroom STATIC COMMOTION, ‘I am Georges Franju’ (artist text & reproduction) edition of 500
VICTIM, artists’ responses to the 1962 movie, Zazie Press, London
Go Between catalogue Magazin 4, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria (reproduction)
2004 Thieves of the Midnight Host, Wayward Canon publishing (artist text & drawing) edition of 100
Biennale! Artist Film and Video catalogue, Temporarycontemporary, London (reproduction)
2003 The Sun Set, Wayward Canon publishing, (artist text & lino print) edition of 100
Transmission: Speaking and Listening Vol.2, ed. Sharon Kivland/Lesley Sanderson (interview)
2002 Navigation Was always a Difficult Art, Vargas Organisation, London (text)
2001 Midwatch, (French/English) Wayward Canon publishing (artist text) edition of 100
Encounters Between Here and There, catalogue, The Architecture Foundation, London (script)
2001 Traversez, catalogue, Musé d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, France
1999 Metronome 4,5,6:Backwards Translation. Ed. Clémentine Deliss. (artist text & reproduction)
Art Ileria, Kluze, Slovenia (text)
1998 ATOMIC, catalogue, Arts Catalyst, London (text & reproduction)
1997 ISLAS, catalogue, CAAM, Spain. (reproduction)
Metronome 1 - London, Ed. Clémentine Deliss (artist text)
1996 LIFE - LIVE catalogue, Musé d'Art Modern de la Ville de Paris (reproduction, plummet)
REVIEWS
2013 Wide Angle, Sight & Sound, June
2012 Baltic Triennial, Frieze, Nov/Dec issue
SO-LA, ArtReview Dec 2012, Martin Herbert
2010 The Cassiopeia Plan, Wysing Arts Centre, Kathy Noble Frieze online Feb 2010
2008 The Children of the Revolution, Rodeo, Istanbul, Art in America, 3/1/09 by Pelin Uran
Resistance Domination Secret, Les Inrockuptibles, No 656, 24 Juin 2008.
2007 Wayward Canon, Time Out critics’ choice, July 21
2007 Philip, Various authors (Project Press, Dublin, 2007) Aaron Schuster Frieze Apr 2007
2005 Wayward Canon / Taverna Especial, Stuart Bailey Metropolis M #1 Autumn
2004 Superpower Dakar Chapter, Time Out, October
2004 Reversion of the Beast Folk, Peter Suchin, Mute # 28
2002 Aristotles Fieber De Limburger, September The Netherlands
2001 Midwatch Evening Standard August
Midwatch Time Out, critics’ choice, August
Midwatch Jessica Lack The Guardian. August
Midwatch The Guardian, Picks of the week. August
Salon-3 The Guardian, April
2000 Glow Boys The Biggest Library Yet, March
1999 Glow Boys New Musical Express, August
The Glow Boys Night Metro, July
1999 Atomic Caroline Smith Creative Camera, # 356
1998 Atomic Guardian Critics' Choice, November
Glow Boys Pauline van Mourik Broekman Mute # 11
Glow Boys Melody Maker, August
1997 ISLAS "El Centro del Universo" Canarias 7
"The Frontiers of Space "Tate magazine
1996 Seethroughbrain Untitled , September
Seethroughbrain 'The Magnificent Seven' The Scotsman on Sunday, September
CONFERENCES
2013 Artist Moving Image Festival, Tramway, Glasgow
2012 Nuclear Culture Conference, Arts Catalyst & Goldsmiths College, University of London. In
conversation with Kodwo Eshun (Otolith Group) & philosopher Liam Sprod.
Documentary film and public space Jerwood Visual Arts.
The Role of Art in 21st Century, Cambridge University Dialectic Society with Vivienne Westwood
& Lauren Parker (Head of Contemporary Programme, V&A Museum)
Sounding East (radio) with Johnathon P Watts, Royal College of Art, London
Africa in Science Fiction, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre
Africa in Science Fiction, Arnolfini, Bristol
2011 Origins: Image re-appropriation in video, with Doug Fishbone The Cutting Room, Nottingham
2011 The Moving Image in a post-internet world, conference for Ward Magazine with Ed Atkins, James
Richards and Gil Leung.
2008 Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London.
Against The Grain:Learning from Derek Jarman’s Cinema, Serpentine Gallery/Birkbeck, London
2007 Walking as Art, Arttalk, Nicosia, Cyprus.
2006 Forecast, The concept of Chi-essence of artistic creativity, biodiversity and genetic research,
Image Research Laboratory, Xi’an Academy of Fine Art, China.
Interval 2, Deleuze and Cinema, The Slade School of Art/ Institute Français, London
2004 Getting it Made: Contemporary Film & Video, Tate Britain
2003 Transmission:Speaking and Listening, SITE / The Showroom/Sheffield University
Symbolic vs Real (Aspirations and Outcomes in Site-Specific and Socially Engaged
Contemporary Art), in association with Goldsmiths College, London.
Future Acadamies, International Conference, Dakar, Senegal
2002 The Day of The Queel, Chelsea School of Art /Royal Army Medical College, London.
2001 The International Necronautical Society, The Office of Anti-matter, ACI, London
2000 Enregestrement, recording for France Culture (Radio)
1999 Atomic Milena Kosec, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Nuclear Future, Imperial College, London: in conversation with leading physicists and nuclear
scientists.
collaborative Science Fiction novel Philip:
http://www.lulu.com/content/571972