WITHDRAWN: Thatcher the Snatcher and Imperial Slop is a monumental sculptural confrontation and performance-based installation by Baloney—the collaborative pseudonym of artists Z Behl and Kim Moloney—unfolding across the wooded grounds of Mother-in-Laws Gallery during Upstate Art Weekend 2025. 

Anchored in the critical and conceptual framework of Raymond Briggs’ banned children’s book The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman, the project reframes historical violence through the lens of discarded narratives, gendered nationalism, and sculptural allegory. 

While the Tin-Pot Foreign General will not be unveiled until 2026, this year’s expansion introduces new sculptural elements that deepen the mythology initiated in Baloney’s widely noted 2024 work: a towering, militarized effigy of Margaret Thatcher assembled from discarded domestic appliances and American steel. 

For 2025, Thatcher returns at the helm of a British warship– SS IMPERIAL SLOP–  a surreal, welded steel vessel captained by three grotesque “police piggies” in cheesecloth regalia. All three chapters of this project, Thatcher the Snatcher, SS Imperial Slop, and The Tin-Pot Foreign General are composed entirely of salvaged materials and fabricated through a blend of tactical engineering and absurdist pageantry. The figures oscillate between unhinged and operatic comedic and the tragically familiar.

The installation is punctuated by a series of hand-painted enamel plaques that reproduce and reinterpret Briggs’ original illustrations—recontextualized for a contemporary audience within a shifting American cultural landscape where the erasure of dissenting voices, especially in literature, is once again underway.

During the opening on July 19th at 3pm, is a one-off performance that activates the sculpture as both stage and actor—an absurdist theatre of war, ego, and imperial ambition. This live element positions the work within an embodied tradition of political spectacle, drawing on traditions of agitprop, ritual, and late-capitalist camp. Two children, dressed as Margaret Thatcher and General Galtieri, will re-enact the Falkland War through the lens of Raymond Briggs’ storybook. Also, Pigs in a blanket will be available as well as smaller works for purchase to support next year’s iteration of the project.