Marie Biggins
Absorbed by the theatricality of Marie Biggin 's installation, The Carousel, the spectator, caught momentarily by expectations of childhood memories of merry-go-rounds, begins the ride-a slow turning, a steady rise and fall with the gentle breathing of the wheezy tune. Before the first turn, the circle yet incomplete, the sentimental meandering through the innocence of childhood fantasy is pervaded by 'the stained memories of actuality', : the hard unyielding bodies of impaled steeds, the flared nostrils, the startled wide eyes, bared teeth, chipped and flaking paint, the shudder as the motor begins the grind to motion, the mechanical and the musical entwined, the grip of sticky hands on sticky poles, the mingled showground odours of food and dung, the heat of the myriad bare light bulbs framing the reflections of riders, the view of the world beyond the game a sea of faces, thin masks of falsity proclaiming the fun, a passive repression of the hypocrisy of this cultural legacy of warfare.
The magic of The Carousel collides with the void as perpetuity of patriarchal culture.
Yet The Carousel compels, the circling motion fusing spectator and work in a disturbing collusion through the ever-decreasing circles of imposing horses and mocking cheval-glasses to a central obelisk, a tumid, imposing phallus from which emanates sounds of fun and fear. The obelisk, as war memorial, commemorates those killed in battle and denotes the act of public remembrance of the dead of war. The game of war is institutionalised, condoned and contained by the consensual passivity of the ring of pawns, stoic masks of acceptance under the sanctifying protection of the fluid, white, veiled canopy connecting the pinnacle of the obelisk