Budgie Butlins
23 August- 25 September 2010
Belfast
Budgie Butlins tableau vivant of Fauvist flavour almost got me run over by a cab. As the colourful winsome window pulled me in, I scarcely heard the warning cries of my companion while being enchanted from across the road. Viewed only from the street through a shop window, Budgie Butlins shows a budgie-sized caravan park spanning the depth of the room. A utopian environment complete with mini-caravans on a hillside, two-dimensional mountains, trees and a few budgies, this was a fairly endearing piece of eye-candy. It offers an anthropomorphic and humoristic view on the strictly regimented Butlin’s Holiday Camps popular in the 1950s and 1960s that were later replaced by package holidays and resorts. Looking into the window one is reminded of the sometimes silliness of holidaymakers and the unattainable dream of the flawless holiday. From a more complex standpoint, Jean Baudrillard’s notions of the simulacrum are brought to mind: the budgies as a substitute for people, and the holiday camp environment for the constructed nature of experience.
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