Arts

The sparrow

"That's where the sparrow is," the guy in front of me tells his partner as I step into Tate Modern once more.

Ah yes, the dying sparrow, a work by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. There's been a lot of press about this.

Here's an excerpt from the notes in the gallery:

"We are raised with a perception of public space as a place where we are not allowed to act in an emotional or personal way, we wanted to make a work which questions our assumptions of what is and what is not supposed to happen in a place like this."

Reasonable as far as it goes, but I'm not sure I believe the premise. People act in personal and emotional ways all the time in public.

Even if they didn't, the publicity surrounding this work means that I can't muster a single emotional response to it. The sparrow's a robot. I know this. It flaps its wing in a pathetic, mechanical way. Sure it's well made, but it's not alive. I can't respond emotionally to a cold lump of metal, however realistically clothed.

Neat trick, but it didn't quite do it for me.