This is Not a Toy

30cm x 25cm x5cm

 

Description

 

Toy gun stitched into scraps of children’s vintage fabrics

 

Themes, comments and storylines

 

This piece was first shown at The Quest for the Inner Child: Souvenirshop at OVADA/Oxford in 2006, and again in Am I That Name? in London in April 2007. On both occasion, on both occasions alongside the Latchkey Kids and of the Flower Children.

Now it is to be found in the box Form and Content.

  

“But the piece I found most thought provoking in the Souvenir Shop was  'This is not a toy', possibly because it seemed set apart from the other pieces. I have unsuccessfully been trying to recall a different work relating to childhood and using guns which I saw a long time ago at a London Gallery. It might have been White Cube, but the artist whose name I can't remember was showing a realistic life-size female child wearing a similar frock to the one Grayson Perry wore at the Turner. The child held pistols in both hands in a ready to shoot posture, which with the short frilly frock had a bizarre appearance.  But the figure needed to be seen in context with another part of the installation in a downstairs room of balloons suggesting the aftermath of a children's birthday party.  The overall atmosphere of the installation seemed to be a response to sexual abuse, but your gun is more ambiguous.”

 

Exhibition visitor’s comment, Oxford 2006