EMANATIONS
Cover illustration. The Stream of Consciousness, as it flows in Retailia.
The United Queendom of Retailia
Welcome!
Patron of Small Furry Animals and Protector of Everything that Crawls
Situated somewhere in MailArtMartha’ s brain the United Queendom of Retailia grew from the ancient Queendom of Artsnailia, where Snail Mail Art has flourished from time immemorial, that is since 1998. From Artsnailia Queen Martha the First marched to the conquest of the world of retail at the handle of her Shopping Trolley Gallery taking mail art where no mail art has gone before.
Eventually. in 2012, and after fourteen years of shocking poor shoppers in the retail outlets of Retailia and beyond, The Shopping Trolley Gallery burnt down in the Great Fire of Snailmail -on-Sea, victim of a terrorist attack.
July 27, 2014, saw the birth of the Front Door Gallery, which shows were documented in the International Union of Mail Artists site. The new Shopping Trolley Gallery is seen inside. This lighter and faster sports model is the ceremonial version of the old STG, which was burnt in the Great Fire as already reported.
To Artsnailia has been annexed Cloudcuckooland, populated by dreamers and where the Queen has her summer residence, Cloud Nine. The Queendom is bordered on three sides by the Kingdom of Encroaching Reality and on the fourth by the Sea of Escapism. Snailmail-on-Sea is the capital city and its social, cultural and religious hub. It is said that its streets are paved with Mail Art...
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The Retailian coat of arms is divided in three fields. The top field is an echo of the original pennant of the Realm which is now embodied in the National Flag , the left has a Spiral and the right a Cuckoo on a Cloud representing Artsnalia and Cloudcuckooland respectively. On top is the Royal Crown in gold decorated with a Shopping Trolley flanked by two Cauliflowers, the national flower of Retailia. On each side of the shield the supporters are two rampant snails with an envelope in their mouth representing deliberation and perseverance in the pursuit of Mail Art. The motto translates as
probably
The Retailian deep blue flag with white spots reminds us of Vacuity and Dottiness, the virtues that characterize our sovereign and are expected of all good subjects to the Queen. Some say, unkindly, that she is off her trolley. Not true, our Queen still is very much on her trolley.
This, the National Anthem of Retailia, is only one stanza long because, according to Count Henrick Shline von Uberwald,“all real patriots can never remember more than one verse of their anthem and get through the subsequent verses by going ”, as Sir Terry Pratchet has reported.
This local beauty is adorned with the National Flower of Retailia, the cauliflower. The likeness of this gorgeous girl to our beloved Queen is not coincidental, the Queen’s grandfather was well known for his love of the people.
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Tourism thrives in the Queendom, attracted each season by the beauty of the Affordable Range with its highest peak, Mount Sales. In this region, in the winter and summer seasons, many bargain hunters are seen, searching for the Great Bargain and also for the more elusive beast, the Lesser Spotted Bargain .
The National Dish is not snails, of which there are plenty in Artsnalia, because they are a protected species in the Queendom.
Fertile Retailia, bathed by the Stream of Consciousness, has abundant natural renewable resources of imagination, creativity and sheer nerve which sustain a thriving manufacturing industry. Its main exports are Art Postcards, Artistamps, Artist’ s Trading Cards and Trashpo.
Recently the Queendom has acquired a worldwide reputation for the production of excellent Trashpo. The raw material is completely home grown by humans aided by foxes and other wild life in the playing fields and urban open spaces of the realm .
The especially trained sniffer dogs harvest the trash which is then transported by shopping trolley to the assembly line in The Studio, the quaint name given to the Retailian main industrial complex.
Here is some Trashpo ready to ship
StrainThe DKULT Food Strainers are fang-made by Trashpo Sniffer dogs in the derelict open spaces of the United Queendom of Retailia. First the dogs sniff out a sock, then they thrash it about until enough holes develop when it becomes ready to pack and ship worldwide. The thrashing process, dependent as it is not only on the weather but also on the mood of the dogs and the quantity and quality of the holes, takes from three to eight months. There are therefore three types: holy, more holy and positively saintly. Warning: Do not wash after use. It may clean up and affect the taste of your food
Retailia is also the main manufacturer of DKult, the miracle drug that is currently the buzz in medical circles worldwide.
MAXIMUM STRENGTH
DKULT
CONTAINS IMAGINATION FOR FAST EFFECTIVE RELIEF OF REALITY ISSUES
WARNING: EXCEED THE STATED DOSE RECOMMENDED BY DOCTORS IF YOU : HAVE A DISORDER WHICH CAUSES EXCESSIVE RATIONALITY HAVE OR HAVE EVER HAD AN IMPULSE TO PAINT PRETTY FLOWERS BEFORE YOU TAKE DKULT DO NOT TAKE DKULT IF YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO ORIGINAL THINKING POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS LIKE ALL MEDICINES DKULT CAN CAUSE SOME MILD SIDE EFFECTS. IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING, ENJOY ! AN URGE TO PICK UP ROAD KILL RELUCTANCE TO THROW AWAY ANY RUBBISH STICKY GRUBBY FINGERS
By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen
Product of the United Queendom of
The Retailian currency is the Marth which has a Fixed Exchange Rate (or FER) of nought Pounds Sterling or zero American Dollars. The FER is far superior to the FTSE, the NIKKE and the John Dow put together and a financial measure which other countries would do well in adopting.
The official religion of the Queendom is a shaman based Cyclical Polytheism, in which a different god or goddess is worshipped every week in turn, to be on the safe side. Religious scholars have calculated that there are enough deities at present in this world, or rather in the other, to last until the middle of June 3462, after which it will become necessary to start recycling from the beginning or create a few more. Unless global warming takes its toll or the sun explodes or we just get bored.
In this page we see Purchasia, the Goddess of Markets and Malls, pushing a shopping trolley, an old image already with the motto:
The ancient gold figurine below represents a shaman with animal headgear and what appears to be a ceremonial shopping trolley as it has no wheels, probably full of magic Mail Art mushrooms .This cult precedes any other and it is surmised that it was given up as shopping while intoxicated was a bad bargain.
We have seen Retailia as a thriving and progressive community engaged in artistic pursuits where all is peace and calm and good will, an ideal country everybody loves to visit and which is the envy of the world...
General Carlos Marth, head of the Marthist party and cousin of Her Majesty, is a constant headache for the Queen with his revolutionary, some say revolting, ideas.
Reproduced here is Gen. Marth manifesto, or as he likes to call it, the Marthfesto.
All Art is pure (non)sense. The sense of Art for the refuses to be the same sense of Art for . Art objects look down on us while we sense(suously) dance in Mindspace around them. If the (es)sense of art is its very lack of (es)sense its meaning is not. A nouveau (non)sense(ationalist) movement has been created by Me, El Generalisimo, and it is a scion of post modern structuralism, aided by the system of differences contained in the mechanical and metaphysical signification of electronic technology. Art has come to mean (re)production of the art artefact. Its (re)creation is the new original. The (evane)sense of the original is both signifier and signified of an identification with the ideal of (joy)sense. This innate (joy)sense has to be recovered after it is taken away by the Other.
MailArtMartha
The United Qeendom of Retailia First edition January 2012 Second edition December 2014