Blame their parents?
Out of context: Reply #17
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Got it:
The artist is Laura Ford.
"Ford's work is a satirical portrait of the ridiculous, a manisfestation of the layers of contradiction that surround us everyday. Informed by folklore both past and present, and conscious in its use of inconsistency, the obvious refrain to Ford's new work is that of the crossover between the child and the adult. "At three or four," says Ford "children have no sense of reason and consequence, and yet, in many ways, they are still seen as miniature adults."
The politocal sensibilty of the piece, represented in the parody of the suicide bomber, is implicit but not inescapable. "It started with the paranoia of the outsider who can enter our lives and destroy everything we love" says Ford, "someone outside anarchy." This paranoiac idea has alway been a potent force for inciting fear, but in Fords work, the layers of contradiction make this distinction less tenable, as these individuals are merely children. The result is nothing more than childish naughtiness.
By toying with appearance and reality, Ford is deliberately teasing, aiming to slightly unnerve her audience. Inspired by the folk hero, from Robin Hood to Al Qaeda, Ford implicitly draws on the paradox that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, simultaneously heroic and villainous depneding on ones point of view. In manipulating our discomfort, whether it is over the posthumous defiance of a youthful suicide bomber, or the fact that our own children like to play war: Ford's work is an intoxicating critique of a simplistic view of the world, a reminder of the consequences of such naivety. The result is particularly portentous for the audience. After all, if the distinction between the child and the adult, the terrorist and the freedom fighterm and the villaing and the hero, is unclear, how can we truly know who to accept, who to trust, and who to fear?"- Article from December 2003 Flux Magazine. The exhibtion was on at Beaconsfield until a few weeks ago. I can't find any of the work online tho.