The Garden of Earthly Delights, Michael O’Pray from the Reservoir catalogue 1994
This piece is a 1990’s video version of
Bosch’s painting.
‘In the magnificent confrontational opening sequence a bride and her groom stand in front of their suburban house overtowered by pylons. She extricates herself, leaving herself behind like an empty shell, or doppelganger to walk towards the camera where she performs a brazen striptease to leave the shot as she insolently removes her blonde wig. In the second part, the same woman holding her baby disconsolately walks back and forth in front of a nightmarish Trafalgar Square through which runs a tube train. Matted in are shots of riots and gruesome red worms. A huge pelican forever attempts to take wing, a fountain’s water cascades upwards. The whole scene is manic, one of social chaos and mental turmoil. In the final sequence madness rules as a woman eternally spins, two heads swivel, a large insect menaces, a used ashtray turns, and in another corner an eye operation takes place. None of these figures or objects occupy real space, they are scattered about the screen in a dance of perpetual horror and incoherent disjuncture.’