our time. What am I supposed to paint, pictures about nice things? Well, things right now are not very nice." Swan eating Artist Eats Swan 2007 was a protest against royalty, the rich and the upper classes in which Chunky Mark ate a cooked swan he claimed he had found dead on a West Country farm, outside the Guy Hilton Gallery in East London as part of the galleries' January 2007 "So Sad" exhibition which also included such art luminaries as Will Self. Speaking to The Times, which noted that prosecution was a possible outcome of the stunt, McGowan said: "I read that the Queen is the only person who's allowed to eat a swan - it's outrageous. Mum will freak out if I get arrested, but then again, I could be a martyr for the working class. Let's see what happens." The protest featured on Channel 4 News during which it was revealed police were investigating McGowan as eating a swan is a privilege only legally available to the Queen. McGowan received death threats from animal rights activists, although no legal action was pursued against him in the end. Corgi eating On 30 May 2007, Mark McGowan conducted two pieces of protest performance art he entitled Eating The Queen's Dogs, in which he ate the meat of a Pembroke Corgi; one in a radio broadcast on London's Resonance FM radio station, and the other was live and outside a posh cafe surrounded by press near Downing Street. The event was in protest about a fox hunt, led by Prince Philip, on the Queen's Sandringham Estate, where a fox was allegedly mistreated. McGowan, who had made the corgi meat into kebabs, told the BBC that the corgi had died of natural causes at a dog breeding farm. Eating The Queen's Dogs attracted international attention in the press and tabloids. It was claimed that Yoko Ono was present at the radio broadcast version of Eating The Queen's Dogs and even joined in; Ono later denied this to the BBC. The live stunt received some significant global attention and was covered by Yahoo, was shown on American television by CBS News and on Canadian television by CBC News; the Queen is also the monarch of Canada and the protest there was described as "shock art gone too far." Despite counter-protests and threats of legal action, the stunt went ahead without incident. Mrs