Another view  Frank Field MP on The Welfare Show  Michael
Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's purpose in this show, at the
Serpentine Gallery in London, could not be more ambitious. What
is the welfare state? What has caused its decline? How
responsible has it been? The artists use different forms to
examine such concepts as power, economic disparity, health care,
immigration and the police state, as well as the social role of
art.  On stepping into the exhibition, the observer is greeted
by various things: an empty wheelchair with a balloon attached
to it; a cash point with a baby in a carrycot below; a row of
perfectly clean plastic chairs headed by a ticket machine; a
corridor with two beds in it, one occupied by a patient. Does
the baby below the cash point symbolise the huge cost of raising
children or the child's abandonment in a consumer society? What
message are those seats meant to evoke? What image are we
supposed to take away from the gallery housing a row of what I
assume are immigration officers, sittin