A Fool in Gibbet

A Fool in Gibbet (2023)

Oliver McConnie

Small etching showing a jester in a blue hat and pink costume trapped in a gibbet over the Thames, with Canary Wharf's dark silhouette and stormy skies in the background.

^{Listen to an audio description of this work}

A recurring figure in Oliver’s etchings, The Fool represents the alienated other. Housed here in a Gibbet – an instrument of public execution used to display the bodies of criminals and act as a deterrent – the Fool is posed in front of Canary Wharf, emblematic of the capitalist infrastructure propping up the City of London.

A literal illustration of gallows humour, Oliver’s etching makes light of the contemporary moment in relation to capitalism’s control over us, without compromising its very real threat as well as the sense of an impending although not yet definite doom.

^{Listen to this text}

Back to the exhibition