SCULPTURE. Cont'd.
A regal art Cont'd.
Tracey
Emin.
Emin, a staunch royalist who famously stormed swearing out of a Channel 4
panel discussion on the Queen Mother's legacy on the grounds that Jon Snow's
tie was too jaunty, originally planned a tent embroidered with the names of
every member of the royal family she had ever slept with, but was eventually
persuaded to substitute this work instead. Cheekily reconstructing the Queen
Mother's unmade bed along the lines of her own Turner-nominated work, Emin
juxtaposes a half-empty bottle of Gordon's with a well-thumbed copy of the
Racing Post, hinting at the presence, beneath the bedlinen, of a much-loved
copy of a thriller by Dick Francis. When fully installed, Liz's Bed will also
feature Ivan Massow standing nearby looking really cross.
Mark
Wallinger, Ecce Regina
Religious imagery and an undertone of melancholy permeate Wallinger's works,
except this one, which is a little model of the Queen Mother. Ecce Homo,
Wallinger's life-sized Christ, which formerly occupied the empty plinth, stood
in stark contrast to the epic figures surrounding it; in Ecce Regina,
Wallinger similarly brings the Queen Mother down to a scale at which we can
all comprehend her - or, if we are 19, drunk, and out for a night on the town
in central London, steal her and put her next to the traffic cone in our
bedroom, in front of the poster of the Pope smoking a joint. But Popular
Monarchist magazine has condemned the proposal on the grounds that any tribute
to the Queen Mother should fully acknowledge her status as half-human,
half-deity, and should therefore be "really, really, really big". GuardianNews.
Photo:
Tracey Emin, Liz's bed
Photo: Anthony Gormley, The Angel of the South
End of the article.