SLAVE MARKET, EXPLOITATION, ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

A swan playfully nudging a set of gauzy painted flowers with an arched head winking it's "come to bed" eyes....  This photograph showcases this notion of beauty very well and it would be a very adequate gift for an elderly and sentimental relative but this lacks any kind of genuine reality, emotional punch or volume.  Though I'm sure the sculptor had no interest in giving this any weight, it was likely one of many products of a similar ilk.  Arranged in some countryside village shop on a battered old table, with a hundred of it's kind - in different positions - peering from flowers, watering cans and rocks suitably covered with the most appeasing coloured green moss.  Beautiful as these birds may be when seen separately it becomes very apparent that we are looking at a mass produced slave market.  I think I prefer my ornamental birds to be a little less exploited.

Which makes me wonder about this next one, not only is it pointless, vacuous and exploited... it is actually much, much more exploited when purchased because this bird is functional.  It also works as a bell, a very nice sounding tingling bell of the sort I would use to summon someone I have no authority over - in the hope of tricking them into thinking I have authority.  This poor, badly sculpted bird is forever chained to a gross bark textured bell with a nightmare-blue base.  It is forever at a beckoning to my whims.  The whims of me.  A sick state of affairs which would be even worse if the creature were actually alive.  It's even sadder for both the above that for all these birds enforced posturing on the shop shelves of horrible porcelain dealers, when they are actually bought and released into freedom (probably as a misguided gift) they are eventually taken to a charity shop in Wythenshawe and sold to myself for 50p each only for me to take photos and write a review that makes fun out of them. Obviously they know their time in my house is soon up and I'll be sending them back to a charity shop.  Though probably a charity shop in Chorlton which will charge a lot more for them.

The next, and last bird I will look at today, is a very classy thing, which fulfils both the roles of being ornamental and functional.  I'm not so sure he's exploited though, he looks as if he's been decently treated what with his age.  Through hard times and many years of movement he's now the last of his kind...  I think he might be based on an cartoon character, though not one I can recall.   He's functional in that he can be used as a money box, in fact there is a hole in the middle of his centre partin which leads into his complete and total emptiness.

I saw this at the weekend when I was at the Brick Lane Market in London and would have bought it if it was 50 pence.  It was, however, five pounds.  So I took a few essential photos and then walked away.  It says on the little bit of writing in front of his large pointy feet "TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANK" so perhaps this dropped into our world from an alternate universe where birds are in control of our finances... money birds... with big green eyes.  But let's face it, that really couldn't ever be true except for in my head, and even then the idea is only on a limited offer. 


It's very sad but I think my foray into the customer landscape of ornamental birds is proving to be making me quite cynical.  What was a potentially pleasant and joyful pursuit has actually turned out to have a dark underbelly.  It's like in that film Blue Velvet when the camera zooms in on the lovely suburban grass and finds it riddled with dirty worms.