As more and more ‘Americanisms’ filter into our British culture, i ask what has happened to a country once heralded as ‘Great’ upon the world stage.
As the Conservative government retakes its seat in parliament, these images speak of an island in decay; of a NHS stretched to the point of collapse under the stress of a continual flow of foreign tourists - underpinned by an unchallenged epidemic of immigration by those in power, where British citizens are placed second best, forced to access food-banks, imposed upon them by the steady rise in living standards and the non rise of salaries, that can only make a country and its people poor. The Workers and Labourers of this island watch in disbelief as their pensions are snatched away before their eyes, to dissappear into the pocket of yet another greedy politician. This is an island in crises and at breaking point.
Children on the streets – ground level – beg for food and rely on handouts, full of desire, empty of inspiration as they wish for so many things that they know they can never have, overshadowed by Disney – in its glory, a global institution, manifested in the iconic images of its princesses and fairies as they look down upon our solemn landscape, be it, from the balconies of their affordable housing.
Ariel waits patiently outside Ocean Billy’s fish and chip shop whilst Merida watches from her tower, bow at hand. Cinderella stands beneath the disco ball that hangs outside the council flat ground floor window and Rapunzel looks from her balcony, unsure as to whether or not she should let her hair down. Tinkerbell tends to the BBQ, Mulan smiles as her laundry dries upon the rotary line, Sleeping Beauty opens her skirt to reveal the similarity between it and the England flag that hangs over her head and Alice gestures a curtsy in her blue dress, in direct contrast to an elderly bag lady whom wraps a sheet of blue plastic around her to keep out the cold.
This is England 2015 in its extreme. This is a class system charging in opposite directions, mothered beneath a political umbrella of disaster, discontent and social lack of vision. Every value that we once held as being British, a different England from a lost era, slowly drains away with time, the mislead youth fashionably angry with anyone in work, the old having to sell their war medals to pay the gas bill and the even more fashionably ‘Americanism’ muttered on the lips of everyone, ‘Well man, I’m just trying to get paid!’
Mark S. Masters - June 2015
To read an Essay on this book written by fellow artist, Louise Johnson - click here