In this “performance” I use the heron to refer to the ancient Egyptian belief system. The heron symbolises a god which brings prosperity. At one time, the shape of a heron was worshipped as a shrine to a god, now it’s used as a deterrent to keep herons away from ponds. This interested me, and relates to how different people interpret things differently. This is a slightly extreme example as the two different perceptions of the shape are separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years.

I thought it would be interesting to use its sculptural symbology in a religious context once again. It was once believed to bring prosperity and because of the current financial climate I felt the need to explore this. I blessed the banking system with a visit from an ancient god.
It wasn’t important whether people who saw me understood what I was doing, that’s immaterial. It’s about me believing that this bird, this religious act will solve the recession.
This raises questions about belief. The fact that it’s a belief system that no longer exists is important because it’s obvious to an outsider that it won’t work. It wouldn’t have the same effect if it was a blessing from an existing religion because enough people would believe it would work. The piece becomes about the futility and impracticality of belief.

I got quite a few funny looks because it was so out of place for a high street. If I were doing this on a Friday night on the Otley Run it would have had a completely different affect. One reason being because I’d be surrounded by people more elaborately dressed and would look relatively tame in comparison. Another reason being (which is closely linked to the first) I would be viewed by a totally different audience. It’s all about context.

It’s quite interesting how all these people in the street won’t have had the foggiest what I was doing or what it meant, but this doesn’t matter. The pieces are the photographs taken from the performance; these will then be subjected to a totally different audience. These photos still need explaining though, it’s not immediate what this piece is about, compared to my ‘Dreamdish’ and ‘Urban Bird Boxes’ which were pretty self explanatory.

There seems to be a trend of healing emerging in my work. I seem to have an impulse to make things that are somehow beneficial. The bird boxes take the noisy traffic sounds and turn them into calming birdsong, the Dreamdish heals people as they watch their TVs by bringing their attention to the filtering of the media and the Bank Blessing attempt at healing the economy.
I was wondering where this attitude fitted in with the greater scheme of art. I read that a modernist attitude was to right the wrongs of the world, which got me slightly worried. I thought that my concepts might be over fifty years out of date, but Marcus Coates does similar work about shamanism and belief so perhaps it’s an “alter modern” attitude, which was more comforting.