At first we thought we'd found the hiding spot of the 7th Earl of Lucan, Richard Bingham, who has not been seen since murdering his children's nanny one November evening in 1974. But no, we'd found some bags of art, otherwise known as potatoes. Alas, there was, thankfully, no blight involved: capitalist overproduction had dispensed with the spuds, whose apparent uselessness, as production's unsightly excess (they were, afterall, unwashed potatoes), was now free to become apparent as art.
The Earl's of Lucan, apart from being famous for disappearing after committing in-house murders and leading the disasterous Charge of the Light Brigade, were also involved in Ireland's Great Famine, 'owning' over 60,000 acres of Land. The Irish Landlords- English nobility who very often hadn't placed a foot in Ireland- and their tyrannical Middlemen made conditions so bad for their peasant cottiers- celts who had once freely grazed cattle across the land- that single crops became the norm. Thus a single potato disease could wreak terrible suffering, famine and death, and lead to an Irish Diaspora. Some say the English are responsible for genocide. Well, that's a bit of a simplification of a highly complex and exploitative chapter in colonial history. But what does precise history matter when we have, here, art and entertainment! Art that can so allusively exploit, um, i mean problematise and explore notions of colonisation, economic exploitation, the Irish/Australian convict connection, the history of the readymade, happenings, art povera... and bags of dumped, um, potatoes. Does being unwashed make them abject?
Now we shall all be free to wear brown polo shirts, khaki shorts, and beautiful, rustic sandals, all in the culturally tanning glow of art!
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