Luigi Giannuzzi and Gavin Aldred, Cock: Indian Fireworks Art, Westzone Publishing, London, 2000

This sturdy and sizable accordion is a wonderful visual feast that documents a wide range of packaging images used by Indian firework manufacturers from the city of Sivakasi.

In an informative essay at the beginning of the book by Peter Nagy titled, A cartography of pictures, he states:

This book presents a simultaneity of histories. On the one hand we have a group of pictures culled from the immense stockpile created by artists in India over the past century, images which have served multiple uses and played contradictory roles, images whose semiotics are intertwined with the social and political histories of the Indian state. Complementary to this, we have a collection of packaging for a particular product and can discern the desires which have been projected onto that product.

Nagy goes on to write about fireworks' relationship to the Hindu festival Diwali (festival of lights) and how integral they have become to its celebration. In his conclusion he writes:

This collection of packaging images then, in the final analysis, describes the process taken from  colonial subject through independence and into globalisation. It celebrates the radical multiplicities of Hindu symbologies and their effects on secular subjects.

For those curious about the accordions' title, Nagy writes, "Surely innuendo was the goal for the artist who painted a none-too-subtle temptress holding a giant Roman candle and the copywriter who christened her "Cock Siren". All is explained!

42 double-sided pages, individual pages 12" (h) x 6.25" (w), and when fully open 22 ft 11 inches.

back cover