Art at the Zoo and Zoo as Art

Last weekend saw several developments in the London world of Old Ken Digby. Becoming a year older, I'd like to think, adds a certain patina to one's endeavors and perceptions such that the world glows gold like the setting sun behind the Gherkin.

Okay, so much for those lies. Actually, upkeep of ye olde blog has been hindered by two things, neither of which have to do with birthday doings and seeings. First of all, Old Ken has been mired in work-a-day preoccupations. But, secondly, some kind of software gremlins had beset my blogging program such that I couldn's upload images. And, as we know, they're ain't no bloggin' without no pitchers!



So, now that things are fixed up again, let's get down to business. First off, we have the much bally-hooed Tate Modern slides, for which the children in the queue above are waiting. As the event has just opened, there were lines for BOTH the slides and for tickets to ride on said slides. So, yours truly doesn't actually have the rug burns to prove that I've been on the slides, but it certainly looks like a good time.



I'm not completely convinced by the engineering of this operation, let alone the merits of having the slides completely enclosed like this. I mean, the first time they have a "late night at the Tate session" and the inevitable stag party shows up having consumed a total of 450 pints of fortified lager, 12 curries and then barfs all over the interior of said slide, it's going to stink something horrible.



The double-helix arrangement seen above is the most dramatic of the slide lot. It's just too bad that more extensive use wasn't made of the space of the Turbine Hall. But perhaps safety and gravitational concerns pose some intractable limitations.

Well, from the Tate and its serpentine forms, it seemed only natural to move along to the London Zoo, which has recently played host to the Zoo Art Fair. This fair is a "fringe" accompaniment to the more upscale Frieze Art Fair—with the important exception that it gathers art from galleries in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and Mexico City, which are less than five years old.



Were you going to be showing art at a zoo, would you choose objects with some kind of animal theme? Evidentally, the answer was "yes" for artists in German, Mexico, the US and the UK alike. Horned animals seemed to be in particular abundance, as is demonstrated by this unicorn ...



... this buck ...



... this other buck ...



... or even this other buck. Believe it or not, there were still further examples of bucks that I will keep to myself for the sake of brevity. Why, I found myself asking, were such creatures so attractive? Is there something about a rampant, expressly virile animal that speaks to the desires or—dare I say it, the zeitgeist—of our dark historical moment? Or, in a puerile play on words, were the tedious collection of artists on display simply (probably unconsiously) disclosing the true ambition of their work—i.e. to make bucks?



Either way, the most exciting buck to be seen was the paretially flayed polychrome model on exhibition in the cage of the zoo's komodo dragon, which is just visible in the image's lower right-hand corner. Perhaps the moral of this story is that if we want to entertain humans, we should make slides and keep the artificial bucks as the playthings of dragons.