The simple explanation of this is that it's my attempt
to make a pastiche of the El Greco of Christ casting the traders out of
the Temple, which I've always loved for its passion. (He did more than
one version of this painting, the one I like most is here,
an earlier one here
)
There is a slightly bonkers story also, in that I made
the picture I believe a year or more before the first IRA bomb in the
City, and it appears to have an oddly precognitive aspect in that I much
later saw TV footage from the same spot (because it's a good place to
put a tripod) with the same buildings and a pall of smoke going up behind
them, struck me very much anyway.
Of course it's a picture of Mammon in disarray, the flames
are from the magazine version of a car ad of the period. I was telling
someone the story in a gallery once, described the ad as "that terrible
ad" and the person said, "oh, you know a friend of mine art-directed that
ad..." The Christ figure, on which I've very unusually done some retouching
to fix the 'rays', is called 'The Divine Mercy', the object of a sort
of Catholic cult of which my grandmother was fond. (see Sr. Faustina..).
When I was about 10 an enlightened teacher got us to consider 'what would
happen if Christ re-appeared in the world today?', and we of course came
to the conclusion that He'd be arrested and probably crucified again.
This montage was featured on the cover of 'Creative Camera' magazine,
issue 3:23 (one for the 23 afficionados- see here
if you're not).
Private Collection.
