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The body of a peasant, modelled from ceramic, is strewn on the ground, its muted tones blending in with the cement flooring Set in a basement room of Goldsmiths CCA, a labyrinthine former bathhouse, this ominous scene could be the site of a murder The figure is a reference to The Land of Cockaigne (1567), a painting by the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, from which it has been transposed In Bruegel’s original, three peasants – one in the same pose as the floor sculpture – have collapsed beneath a table laden with food and wine, suggesting a period of indulgence Both in Bruegel’s exaggerated feast and the ceramic departure, the overstuffed, unconscious body is as much a warning as a promise   The sculpture appears in Sated Soldier, Sated Peasant, Sated Scribe (2021), an exhibition by the Irish artist Sam Keogh, which includes an installation of collaged drawings and performances exploring radical readings of medieval myths Cockaigne, the medieval-era dreamland depicted by Bruegel, is a strange purgatorial place between heaven and hell; the only way you can get there is by being a glutton One of its earliest recorded examples comes from the Kildare Poems, a series of manuscripts from around 1330, which document early Anglo-Irish linguistic developments in the centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland Likely written by a Franciscan order, the bounties of Cockaigne are weaponised as a satire against a rival order of Cistercian monks The descriptions of a decadent abbey – there are wells full of treacle and affairs with nuns nearby – suggest an idle lifestyle that deviates from the proper duties of prayer and charity Elsewhere, its etymology can be traced to Middle French for ‘land of plenty’, deriving from a word for a small sweet cake A Spanish equivalent suggests ‘fools’ paradise’, and a related Dutch term means ‘lazy luscious-land’   The myth of Cockaigne largely passed through an oral tradition, with various written or pictorial accounts freezing it in time Interpretations vary Some historians have noted that the tale follows an Old Testament structure, comparable to the Garden of Eden story and its moral