Posts Tagged David Cameron
NewsArt – MASSIVE BUDGET CUTS LEADS TO INCREASE IN PIGEONS EATING VOMIT
Posted by Heidi in Pigeons eating vomit, Politics, pigeons on October 21, 2010
The UK Government announced the biggest spending cuts in decades today, marking the beginning of the Age of Austerity (two Ages after the Age when Elves first came to the land).
Inspired by the Government’s calls for the nation to start tightening its belt, I have followed this advice with my own art this week.
Hence I have recycled an old and cheap artwork which I have used several times before. I have also made sure it has several interpretations and meaning, giving it optimum value for money.
So to represent the Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne’s approach to economic management, I lured some pigeons to a pile of vomit on the pavement (I was unable to make myself sick this time but luckily a passing banker coming down from a giant cocaine binge happened to be ill right at my feet).
Just some of the many meanings the viewer gets for free from this bargain artwork are the following:
The pile of VOMIT is able to represent the following…
- The ‘mess’ that the Coalition claims Labour has left our finances in after a 10 year binge, followed by this purge before passing out in a neighbour’s front door and wetting themselves (I assume).
-The familiar/regurgitated ideology of Thatcherism that is evident in many of these cuts, yet these cuts are even harsher and chunkier then Margaret Thatcher’s (who was coincidentally being ‘ill’ in hospital the day the cuts were announced, probably intentionally trying to add to the metaphor).
- Fears of these cutbacks leading to a double dip recession and returning to the poor ecominic situation we have only just begun to emerge from are as unappealing as returning to a meal you already ate and found so distasteful you threw it up on the pavement.
- How attempts to make the Private Sector absorb the half a million newly unemployed Public Sector workers will result in force feeding a full sector until the redundant workers are rejected and regurgitated onto the hard pavement of the welfare system.
-How George Osborne sometimes looks like a pile of vomit.
The PIGEONS::
-The happy, waddling British public who rather than get angry and riot like the French are currently doing are happy to potter about and eat whatever scraps are left for them on the pavement or run in front of people awkwardly rather then just flying to the side, even though it’s CLEAR that you’re walking in a straight line towards them.
-The Blitz spirit. These pigeons/the British public understand that times are tough and so will be happy to make do with rationing/vomit. The pigeons that represent the British public will probably then be actually cooked by a British mother embracing the Blitz spirit and feeding her human children this poor meat/British public metaphor, indicating the class system in all its horror somehow.
- There are widespread accusations that these cuts are going to hit the poorest in society hardest and who is worse off then homeless, unemployed pigeons with little to no chance of getting into a good university?… Otters?
-Also the pigeons are here behaving as vagrants who aren’t being shooed away because drastic cuts to police funding will mean fewer frontline officers to deal with pettier crimes such as vagrancy or eating vomit.
- How Osborne and Cameron sometimes look like waddling pigeons.
So it is my sincere hope that once we become more accustomed to the new austerity measures, we will soon be as content, nay, ecstatic, as pigeons eating from a pile of vomit. God willing.
News Art – DIPLOMACY SAVES THE DAY
Today I have looked at how far we have come as a species who can now resolve conflict peacefully through diplomacy. Hopefully, as we continue to evolve, we will soon not even need diplomacy but merely psychic octopuses/octopussi to tell us who would win in a nuclear war…
The President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, will still visit the UK. This is despite recent anger at UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments that Pakistan was linked with groups that ‘promote the export of terror’. The comments had led to a diplomatic row.
Look How Far We've Come
This story made me glad we have diplomacy to protect us. We have reasoning and debate to rescue us from the fate of our primitive ancestors. Those primitive ancestors who could only communicate with their fists and weapons (and ocassionally interpretive dance).
But we must never forget our violent roots, no matter how much more intelligent and skilled and capable we now are. I decided to make some long spears to represent the continuity of violence in our history.
This was to remind us that we may be 100 times smarter now but there is still the ever present threat of war.
Unfortunately it took me a lot longer than I had planned to chip the spear heads. And then I couldn’t get them sharp or smooth… nor could I figure out how they go on the wooden stick bit thing.
After 9 hours I gave up and left this pile of rough spear heads, unattached to any stick and quite disappointing. I call it ‘Look how far we have come’.
A man at the British Museum offered to teach me the methods our ancestors used to make them but he spoke so slowly that I’m ashamed to say I became frustrated and stabbed him with one of the spear heads. Luckily I hadn’t been able to sharpen it properly so it just bruised him slightly (and cut him significantly).
My difficulties with the project made me question history and the validity of every iron and bronze age finding because how would those men who look really ugly and stupid in the drawings have done it? And how did they cut their hair so nicely?
May 6th – ELECTION DAY IN THE UK
Posted by Heidi in NewsART Highlights, Politics on May 30, 2010
Britons go to the polls today to choose their new government for 2010. So far the result has been impossible to call with none of the parties winning the hearts or trust of the public.
Mind the gap between politicians and the public
This is a depressing day. The British public has lost all faith in politicians in the last 12 months. I have been working on a moving, kinetic artwork that would sum up the constant disappointment, broken promises and depressing lack of movement that people feel from politics in this day and age.
I decided to construct a series of trains and put them underground, representing the underhanded tactics of many politicians. I also had them going in and out of tunnels, representing the many sexual scandals that often distract us from the more important policy failures.
I then publicised a set timetable with a list of promised arrival and departure times. The art patrons participated wonderfully, making plans and arrangements based on these times. I organised repeated delays, cancellations and break downs to generate a replica of the anger, frustration and despair that watching politics for the last few years has caused me.
I then waited for people to emerge, tired and defeated from these hot, stuffy underground caves and told them they had just taken part in an artwork about politics. On the whole, most people seemed uninterested or feigned a lack of comprehension, very similar to how most people feel about politics. Though two people offered to find me somewhere to sleep for the night which I found incredibly kind, despite being an unnecessary and confusing offer.