One for the Birds

2008

mixed technique, sphere ø 60 cm to give birds flying space

Dedicated to Desiderius Erasmus and Bertie.

A birdcage - the shape of an outsized human head (ø 60 cm) - mockingly dressed in a bowler hat and a bow tie decorated with butterfly 

Erasmus of Rotterdam - to whose ‘Praise of Folly’ this work is dedicated - advocated madness as opposed to the banality of a world eager for ephemeral things. In Samuel Beckett’s opinion, ‘We are all born mad. Some remain so.’designs. Inside the cage are two budgerigars: literally the mind sings!

Mocking the conventions of society, of morals, of ethics, or simply playing with words or images is the privileged territory of art, an open field where anything goes, and where you can give substance to the unspoken and the implied.

Since, perhaps, nothing is more serious than play - and in watching a child play, you see how much you have to be really focused to play - sometimes it is good to laugh at reality or to understand that today ‘… everything is so contradictory that we become facetious in spite of ourselves.’ (Victor Shklovsky, ‘The Knight’s Move’)