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Camden News - by DAN CARRIER
Published: 19 February 2009

La cage aux fowl: Is it art, paltry entertainment or just animal cruelty?

Top art critic slams gallery’s eight-week peacock installation as case of extreme cruelty

ONE of the birds is pecking at a feeder. The other looks on without interest. It finishes its snack and shuffles to the left. Its mate follows. And then they go to the right. And then to the left again.
But is this art?
Held behind a giant golden cage, the two peacocks are the centrepiece of a new art installation at a Hampstead gallery – and have become the unwitting players in an argument over whether artists should use live animals in a show.
The exhibition, called The Need For Uncertainty, is by Romanian artist Mircea Cantor.
Unveiled today (Thursday) at the Camden Arts Centre, in Arkwright Road, it simply features two India Blue peacocks – a male and female – wandering around a first floor gallery space inside an impressive gilded cage.
But animal rights campaigners and art experts have criticised the centre for agreeing to run the two month long show and say it is cruelty masquerading as art.
Arts commentator Brian Sewell said the peacocks had no place being used in art installations.
He said: “I feel very strongly about such things. It is extremely cruel to take an animal out of its natural environment. Peacocks are outside birds and to keep them in these conditions is quite wrong.”
He added he had been instrumental in a campaign five years ago to have a live parrot removed from a show at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank.
“They had a parrot in a so-called work of art that we had removed and I can’t see the difference here,” he added. “A live creature simply has no part in a work of art.”
And his views were backed by animals rights group Advocates for Animals. They said the use of peacocks in the show was a demeaning way of displaying beautiful creatures and that the eight-week stint in an art gallery was clearly an unhealthy situation for the birds to be living in.
Campaigns Officer for Advocates for Animals Jo Sim said: “Whilst I’m glad that some steps are being taken to reduce the impact of this upheaval on the peacocks, surely as a society we’ve moved beyond the need to exploit animals for entertainment?
“The conditions these beautiful creatures will be forced to live in may be compliant to a legal minimum standard but they fall far short of the rich, natural environment they deserve.”
The artist’s brochure to accompany the first floor installation says the themes of the work are migration.
Using art-speak blurb, the brochure states: “Cantor enacts an extravagant act of displacement that, when experienced in present time and space, is physically and psychologically unsettling. “
Previously the artist had made a film called Deeparture – which featured a deer and a wolf circling each other – and another installation that featured a ping pong table surrounded by thousands of broken eggs.
A spokeswoman for the gallery defended the show and said they had taken a number of steps to keep the peacocks happy, including regular check ups from vets, keeping the heating off in their room and a four day settling in period before the show opens.
She said: “The peacocks in this exhibition are receiving the best possible care. We have taken care to consult a diverse range of specialists for expert recommendations.”
The spokeswoman added the birds had come from an RSPCA-recommended peacock farm in Norfolk, and will return there after their 15 minutes – or eight weeks – of fame is complete. Farm bred, they are used to being in a pen.
The spokesman added: “The size of the largest cage is in excess of the minimum required.”

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