festival VISUAL ART For more info go to LIST.CO.UK /FESTIVAL
ZOE WALKER AND
NEIL BROMWICH: THE DRAGON OF
PROFIT AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP
Slaying society’s dragons at Edinburgh Art Festival
At the end of July, passers by on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile were confronted with a giant inl atable green dragon and a procession of agitators attempting to slay it. The dragon was emblazoned with the words, ‘PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP’ on its front, and ‘CORPORATE GREED’ on its back. Some of those battling it were tattooed with the word ‘NATIONALISATION’. It looked like a satirical cartoon made l esh and acted out in a display that resembled something between a mummer’s play and an episode of Horrible Histories.
This was ‘By leaves we live . . . not by the jingling of our coins’, the latest processional intervention by Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich, who have previously made weapons of happiness out of the pink blow-up artillery of ‘Love Cannon’ (2005), which brightened the skies by i ring pink balloons. This new work is inspired by an illustration found on a Northumberland Miners’ Association banner from 1924 as well as 19th century anarchist pamphlets. It acted as a trailer of sorts for The Dragon of Proi t and Private Ownership, in which the dragon lays dormant in Trinity Apse until the end of Edinburgh Art Festival, having hot air blown up its arse, with a booth showing footage of ‘By leaves we live . . . ’. The event itself subverted civic
spectacle and also taps into a very real democratic need for collective participation in artistic acts rather than merely being passive observers. Walker and Bromwich’s intervention is a comic revolutionary provocation in which we can all join in, slaying dragons as we go. (Neil Cooper) ■ Trinity Apse, until 27 Aug , free. ●●●●●
17–28 Aug 2017 THE LIST FESTIVAL 93