Mark Wallinger at Leeds Art Gallery
Threshold to the Kingdom (2000) is a film by Mark Wallinger of people arriving at London City Airport through the International Arrivals gate. Classical music replaces the hubbub of passengers and those awaiting them. The footage has been slowed down and arrivees appear to be walking on the moon. Dressed expensively in black, their motion is funereal.
The film is suspenseful but nothing really happens. We are awaiting someone who never arrives as a processions of others passes by, uneventfully. It’s the beginning of the story, or the end. An elongated yawn becomes a silent scream in this stretched out version of mundane reality, its manifold meanings distorted and enhanced.
People disintegrate, ghost like, between shots. Critics have detected a biblical theme here: the arrivals gate could be the gates of heaven, the border security guard, St Peter, which seems to me entirely plausible, but is nothing to write home about.
The faux drama of the piece and the humour it’s infused with entertain me. I like the idea we’re on a continuum, travelling like cumbersome luggage on the post-flight carousel and arriving, bleary eyed, to be confronted by what we left behind.
Threshold to the Kingdom is at Leeds Art Gallery until January 2019
