Health Warning

Initially designed as a response to a particularly toxic debate environment around the processes and closed-door procurement policy of the regions public art, the project then became nationally relevant when students at Oslo art school questioned the placement of a work that many had deemed problematic.

The Lib/Con commentariat in corporate media were quick to weaponise the debate with calls of cancel culture and an attack on Freedom of Speech. Barely concealed racism bled into a discourse marked by the performative contradiction that those claiming to being silenced, spoke endlessly across multiple national platforms exercising an access to power, that proved the activists core complaints about who had the power to define cultural values in a contested space. As all public space is.

The work is intended as a meditation on these issues and their impact on mental health, though if this doesn¹t work for you, or the questionable amount of old Patriarchs dominating public space, then we can revert to the literal. A recent headline claiming,

“Today, 22 fire fighters rescued a US exchange student after he got stuck inside a giant sculpture of a vagina in southern Germany”.

Proving that some art at least, can indeed be bad for your health.