Cuckoo

Cuckoo
1994/97

Media: fabric, steel, paper, glass 

Size: 500 x 200 x 200mm, 

Exhibited:

1997 – “…from the institution." (one-person exhibition), Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery.

About this work:

Cuckoo (1994/1997) is the first time that reference to a Eurasian cuckoo appears in my work. Importantly, the bird’s name is one of a handful that is a human mimic of the sound the bird makes. The conical object is made to function and read like a dunce’s cap—a conventional symbol of ridicule. The title and the image of the cuckoo pinned to the cap is intended to evoke the sound made by the bird suggesting not only the mocking tone of the name/call, but also the common language use of the word ‘cuckoo’ to denote cruelly someone who is mad/catatonic/retarded or alternatively a parasitic individual ‘out of place’ in their environment. A sense of in-discriminacy is signified in this work through the use of a blinding action, whereby the illustrated cuckoo image that appears in this work is attached to the cap using a pin driven through the paper at the point marked by the cuckoo’s eye.