Mad Dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun or so they say.
The British are the eccentrics to the world, we have reputations for having a 'stiff upper lip' (tea and biscuits anyone?), over cooking vegatables (brussel sprouts boiled into submission) and deep frying (yes in batter) everything including mars bars! We eat strange things like lavabread (fried seaweed with bacon and oats), boiled tripe (cows stomach) and pigs trotters (which are actually quite nice). Lets not forget the weather, we always complain it's too hot/cold/wet/dry/sunny/cloudy/miserable for the time of year. I remmeber when the weather was........ lol!
We do some strange things too, (I'm not suggesting that anyone else doesn't have their little quirks, I remember the cherry pit spitting contest in Michigan!). For instance in Wales (and Ireland) there's Bog snorkelling, in England there's Wool sack racing and Cheese rolling, Shin Kicking and the Welly Toss to name just a few. In Scotland they toss around telegraph poles and call it tossing the caber.
There have been some strange (and contraversal) things done in the name of art, there was one artist who made a concrete inside out house (they got £50,000 prize money for that), or covering the dome of the Albert hall with red plactic for red nose day, someone else put a pile of bricks on the floor of the Tate Gallery and called it art and then there was the artist who displayed an unmade bed! Heck I don't call that art but hey 'cest la vie!
In Trafalgar Square in London there are four plinths, three of them have statues on them and the fourth is empty. It is empty because the money ran out, it was supposed to have had a statue of William IV, no one has been able to decide on who should go on the plinth and so there have been a succession of differnt works of art displayed there.
At the moment is the strangest of them all. The artist Antony Gormly had the idea of placing a person on the fourth plith for 100 days, 24 hours a day but rather than use one person for the whole time he got lots of people interested and each person was allocated 1 hour, to do as they pleased on the plinth. The first person was a lolipop lady (school crossing lady). I was in London to see Mama Mia for the kids birthday and we walked down to Trafalgar square from where we had parked the car. We saw a man playing a tuba (I think that's what it was) dressed in full evening attire, he played various pieces of music and then after him came a priest who said prayers for people who had emailed him before hand.
This is what it says on Antony Gormly's website :-
Antony Gormley’s proposal ONE AND OTHER is that the Fourth Plinth is occupied for 100 consecutive days, 24 hours a day, by members of the public who have volunteered to stand on it for an hour at a time. 2,400 people will be able to participate.
“The idea is very simple. Through putting a person onto the plinth, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol. In the context of Trafalgar Square with its military, valedictory and male historical statues, this elevation of everyday life to the position formerly occupied by monumental art allows us to reflect on the diversity, vulnerability and particularity of the individual in contemporary society. It's about people coming together to do something extraordinary and unpredictable. It could be tragic but it could also be funny."
Antony Gormley, 2009
Is it art? I wouldn't like to say, is it fun, daft, silly amazing and British? Absolutely! :)
The British are the eccentrics to the world, we have reputations for having a 'stiff upper lip' (tea and biscuits anyone?), over cooking vegatables (brussel sprouts boiled into submission) and deep frying (yes in batter) everything including mars bars! We eat strange things like lavabread (fried seaweed with bacon and oats), boiled tripe (cows stomach) and pigs trotters (which are actually quite nice). Lets not forget the weather, we always complain it's too hot/cold/wet/dry/sunny/cloudy/miserable for the time of year. I remmeber when the weather was........ lol!
We do some strange things too, (I'm not suggesting that anyone else doesn't have their little quirks, I remember the cherry pit spitting contest in Michigan!). For instance in Wales (and Ireland) there's Bog snorkelling, in England there's Wool sack racing and Cheese rolling, Shin Kicking and the Welly Toss to name just a few. In Scotland they toss around telegraph poles and call it tossing the caber.
There have been some strange (and contraversal) things done in the name of art, there was one artist who made a concrete inside out house (they got £50,000 prize money for that), or covering the dome of the Albert hall with red plactic for red nose day, someone else put a pile of bricks on the floor of the Tate Gallery and called it art and then there was the artist who displayed an unmade bed! Heck I don't call that art but hey 'cest la vie!
In Trafalgar Square in London there are four plinths, three of them have statues on them and the fourth is empty. It is empty because the money ran out, it was supposed to have had a statue of William IV, no one has been able to decide on who should go on the plinth and so there have been a succession of differnt works of art displayed there.
At the moment is the strangest of them all. The artist Antony Gormly had the idea of placing a person on the fourth plith for 100 days, 24 hours a day but rather than use one person for the whole time he got lots of people interested and each person was allocated 1 hour, to do as they pleased on the plinth. The first person was a lolipop lady (school crossing lady). I was in London to see Mama Mia for the kids birthday and we walked down to Trafalgar square from where we had parked the car. We saw a man playing a tuba (I think that's what it was) dressed in full evening attire, he played various pieces of music and then after him came a priest who said prayers for people who had emailed him before hand.
This is what it says on Antony Gormly's website :-
Antony Gormley’s proposal ONE AND OTHER is that the Fourth Plinth is occupied for 100 consecutive days, 24 hours a day, by members of the public who have volunteered to stand on it for an hour at a time. 2,400 people will be able to participate.
“The idea is very simple. Through putting a person onto the plinth, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol. In the context of Trafalgar Square with its military, valedictory and male historical statues, this elevation of everyday life to the position formerly occupied by monumental art allows us to reflect on the diversity, vulnerability and particularity of the individual in contemporary society. It's about people coming together to do something extraordinary and unpredictable. It could be tragic but it could also be funny."
Antony Gormley, 2009
Is it art? I wouldn't like to say, is it fun, daft, silly amazing and British? Absolutely! :)