Of Mark Wallinger's new show at the Baltic in Gateshead, the Observer's art critic Laura Cumming says: "His work can be extraordinarily condensed, as in the colossal letter 'I' adorning the outside of the Baltic on a banner. The simplest expression of the self, I says everything and nothing, describes everyone and no one. It amounts to a universal self-portrait (one sign fits all) while paradoxically denying the possibility of summing oneself up in an image or a word." Photograph: Colin Davison/Courtesy the artist, Anthony Reynolds Gallery and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
"Each work in this marvellous new show attempts to number the numberless, to make visible some unimaginably vast concept all the way from infinity to eternity." Photograph: Colin Davison /Courtesy the artist, Anthony Reynolds Gallery and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
"Just beyond, not incidentally, is the sea itself, twinkling and lapping in Wallinger’s new film Construction Site, receiving its UK premiere." Photograph: Colin Davison/Courtesy the artist, Anthony Reynolds Gallery and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
"A slideshow flashes up photographs of the several thousand marks Wallinger has chalked on brick walls all over London in the past few years. 'Mark', says the mark, speaking of its maker as well as itself, sending up the narcissism of tagging as well as the futility of trying to leave one’s mark upon London." Photograph: Colin Davison/Courtesy the artist, Anthony Reynolds Gallery and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
"The most powerful piece in this show," according to Cumming. "A vertiginous stairwell drops 13 landings, a plunge so abrupt you lose all sense of orientation. With the simple addition of a couple of mirrors, one above and one below, Wallinger extends this continuum to infinity." Photograph: Gary Calton
