Mark Leckey

March of the Big White Barbarians takes us on a slideshow tour of public sculpture in London, with a rapid succession of public works of art by late 20th century artists, such as Lynn Chadwick, Barry Flanagan, Eduardo Paolozzi, Fernando Botero and Richard Serra. Pictures of these sculptures, in their urban settings of late capitalist architecture and privately owned ‘public’ plazas, are set to the sound of Leckey’s group Jack Too Jack chanting a translated poem by the Lettrist Maurice Lemaître. The slide presentation is a typical pedagogical or corporate device for conveying information and ideas. By using this format Leckey puts forward a critique of authoritative power, culminating in the resigned cry: ‘Ahh, everything’s been eaten, everything’s been drunk. So I’ll just watch the Big White Barbarians passing by.’