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With the help of5,000 police officers and a clutch of journalists, artist James Cauty has created the aftermath of riot and mayhem, complete with a burning church, collapsed overpass and, er, a cow in a block of flats... All the figures are miniatures but, far from the rural idyll of old model villages, Cauty's diorama makes a political statement about societal freedom and state control. After opening under the arches at Hoxton Station, Aftermath Dislocation Principle Parts I & II can now be seen at Piet Hein Eek, Eindhoven, from 24 November
Thousands of police swarm over a scorched landscape tattered and torn by rioting and looting, every window in every building is smashed, vehicles are overturned, bridges and roads destroyed, power pylons are down, a burned-out church still smoulders. Above this post-mayhem scene of destruction, helicopters shine their searchlights on the battered landscape. Above the helicopters, a train rumbles past...
This huge-scale devastation has been carried out at a very small scale indeed, 1:87 to be precise - it's an installation by James Cauty, artist, musician (KLF, The Orb) agent provocateur, prankster and general poker of the establishment. Cauty is well known for the big gestures. This, after all, is the man who, with his K-foundation partner, Bill Drummond, burned a million quid on the Isle of Jura in 1994, amid much publicity and public anguish. Of late, though, he's been living his life in miniature.
The Aftermath Dislocation Principle is a diorama of a post-riot landscape. The rioters have all disappeared and the only people left are milling hoards of police and a handful of waiting journalists. The police sit and stand around in groups, wondering what has happened and what will happen next.
This is a model world about as far removed from the perfect, bucolic idylls of yesteryear's model villages, where old people dressed in perfect whites played bowls on greens, cricketers cricketed and postmen on bikes waved at ladies in long coats walking pairs of Pekingese.
Perhaps it's not a model world at all: 'We don't know. We were going to have a turnstile at the entrance and do it like a model village, taking it out of the fine art department and putting it into the family entertainment...