Title:
Systems Reset Please
Medium/materials: Various
different animal bones, honey bees, super glue, invisible wire and Perspex base
Size: 40.5 x 33 x 21cm
I made this piece near the end of my second year at
UCA Farnham I exhibited it in our second year group show ‘The Perfect System’
which took place at The Arch Gallery in London from the 3rd - 9th June 2013. (http://www.archgallery.co.uk/)
It is meant to illustrate
a clash between systems, belief and science and the short term and long term etc. As you can see there is a large bird/human
creature giving birth in the centre of the installation it is at the same time throttling what appears to be a
figure on his knees in supplication begging
for intervention from on high or ascendance (neither seems
likely). In the other hand she holds what appears to be a gun and is shooting down
the few flying bees that are in the air while another figure tries unsuccessfully to
stay her hand. The chick being born tries
to stay where he is, refusing to born into such a cruel world as another figure
waits to scoop him out. The chick’s
brothers and sisters dine on a huge pile of dead honey bees shot down by the
Mother. As the figure at the front reads from his bone book. When I made this it was shortly after the 2
year ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides which are likely harmful to pollinating
bees was passed by the EU which was opposed by our government refused to back
it in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence that it was one of the reasons
for our plummeting bee population numbers. Luckily it was passed by the EU, but our UK
government (Likely caving to the pesticides big business lobby) showed the sort
of short term thinking that would inevitably harm us in the long term. If the highly important bee pollinates die
out it would not just be a financial disaster for farmers costing them to pollinate
their crops themselves but the larger environmental impact would be even more worrying,
I thought it was a subject worthy of being satirised. The few bees in the air compared to the large
number being consumed by the chicks is to meant to illustrate this sort of idea
we feed well in the short term but in the long term not so well.
The few problems I have
with it are mainly technical the invisible wire I used to hand the flying bees
isn’t invisible (I now have some invisible thread and will hopefully have time to rectify
this soon). The super glue I used stained the perspex’s, I have since this work been more careful with choosing the right bases for my sculptures and for future reference find a different glue for sticking on to perspex....
(Excuse any bad grammar not my strong point)
