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Strange Statues & Sculptures

Does anyone recall a photo in Fortean Times (circa early 00's) of a rather creepy statue that was supposed to have inspired a pair of murderers on a killing spree? I'd thought the murderers were Brady and Hindley, but since I can find zero reference to statues in that story, I must've been mistaken. I do believe they were British, though.

I've been obsessed with finding this again for ages, but so far have found nothing.
 
Snugburys Sculptures



Here I am with the Dalek. It swiveled around and said 'EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!' when you approached.

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It looked espcially impressive from the road and was definitely my favourite.
Nobody dared burn THAT down!
To be fair, you also swivel around saying "Exterminate! Exterminate!" when people approach. Which is why we love you so...
 
To be fair, you also swivel around saying "Exterminate! Exterminate!" when people approach. Which is why we love you so...

Natch. Gotta keep you lot on your toes, what.
 
This is a real house, the "Flintstone House" off of Hwy 280 near Standford, California. It used to be painted white, and lacked the present outdoor decor. Looked better then . . .
dt.common.streams.StreamServer.jpg
 
Just goes to show what happens when you've got butt-loads of money and no taste.
 
The Awakening. Hard to capture the scale of the man emerging from ground in one picture.
 

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Just a random guess but it looks like it might be Saint Umut-Ot of the Philippines, collecting a fart in a can. :thought:

The only authority I can find for this guess is a reddit page.:actw:

In the Philippines, umut-ot can be translated as 'farting' but I don't think the Catholic Church would tolerate a 'Saint of Flatulence' (unless some-one can prove me wrong). Just discovered that you can load a picture into Google search !

The unusual stone monument of a doctor standing 16 feet tall, washing the behind of a half-naked boy atop a toilet bowl, heralds a city’s successful sanitation and hygiene programs.The monument in front of the Palengke ng Marikina near city hall depicts the likeness of Dr. Isaac Eustaquio, the first Filipino to earn a Public Health degree from Harvard University in the United States.

https://sanitationupdates.blog/2008/02/21/philippines-marikina-monument-extols-personal-hygiene/
 
New statue on Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Sq

the "dystopian" artwork - complete with a cherry, a drone and a fly - has now been unveiled.

Passers-by will be able to use their mobile phones to live-stream what the camera-equipped drone can see.

The End, by British artist Heather Phillipson, will stay in place until spring 2022.

Ms Phillipson said the sculpture was not necessarily meant to be "pessimistic" but was also "hopeful" and signalled a "chance of radical change".

But she added: "We are still in a state of collapse."

Ekow Eshun, chairman of the Fourth Plinth commissioning group, said the sculpture "expresses something of the fraught times that we're currently living through while also standing in conversation with the artistic and social history of Trafalgar Square".

I'm not sure what the yellow thing sticking out the top is.

Sculpture



Sculpture
 
Wroclaw, Poland.
worlds-most-creative-statues-3.jpg


...

The statues in Wrocław are somewhat less strange when you read about them, as at https://themostbeautifulplacesineurope.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/statues-in-wroclaw-poland/ :

...the figures are a memorial to the two-year period of harsh martial law inflicted by the People’s Republic of Poland. ... Activists and dissenters were interned without charges or trials by the thousands; people were literally disappearing off the streets – some 100 people were even killed. Kalina demonstrates this period of terror with his statues of people who are literally being swallowed by the earth while going about their daily lives...

I am reminded of a similar effect in a statue that's part of a memorial in Warsaw:

Warsaw Uprising Monument-Retreat.jpg

It's a tribute to the literal underground fighters who hid in Warsaw's sewers during the Warsaw Uprising - which fits another interpretation of the Wrocław statues: that they represent the metaphorically underground resistance to the Communist government and martial law.
 
Strange for all the obvious reasons, stranger still that it's location is a Catholic school in Adelaide.

statue.jpg


It may have been re-designed by now as suggestions had been made back in 2017. See story below:

Blackfriars Priory School to redesign 'suggestive' statue of saint and child after online ridicule
An Adelaide Catholic school has covered up a statue of a religious icon after it created a stir on social media because of its apparently unintended suggestiveness.

The statue was recently installed at Blackfriars Priory School in Prospect and depicts a 16th century saint handing a bread loaf to a child's outstretched hand.

But, as numerous online commentators have pointed out, the effect is somewhat different.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-22/statue-of-saint-and-child-creates-stir/9180724
 
The 'suggestive' statue had been replaced by May 2019 ...
Catholic boys' school replaces suggestive statue of saint and child with bench following backlash

A Catholic boys' school in Australia has replaced a "suggestive" statue with a "buddy bench" after internet users had a field day over images of the tribute.

Blackfriars Priory School, located in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, unveiled a statue in November 2017 depicting St. Martin de Porres holding a loaf of bread while a child reverently peered up at the religious figure.

The problem? Many claimed that the bread seemed to emerge from St. Martin's robe around his pelvic region, making it appear like another object entirely. The child's head and hand placement only fanned the flames of the internet meltdown. ...

Recently, the school unveiled a replacement for the contentious figure — a play area for students, including a "buddy bench" where children are encouraged to sit down and make friends with each other, and a variety of fiberglass animal statues, the Daily Mail reports.

"I am pleased to report that the children are delighted with the bench and animal additions to this play area," Principal Simon Cobiac told the outlet. "We believe that out of such an unforeseen and unfortunate event that we have created a magical space for children in the living memory of St Martin de Porres." ...

FULL STORY: https://www.aol.com/article/news/20...alia-suggestive-statue-saint-martin/23742539/
 
Took them a while, considering the events that had occurred at the school.

The incident seems to have (over?-)sensitized Adelaide residents to alternative interpretations of public statues. This item is from January 2019 ...
Mitcham Council’s playground statue appears X-rated

This owl statue has left us scratching our, errr, heads.

This wooden carving at Mitcham Reserve in Adelaide’s south east is part of a playground designed for kids with a treehouse, spiral tunnel, horse rocker and logs for climbing.

Except for the fact that the totem pole with an owl carving at the top, is remarkably similar to a certain male appendage. ...

AdelaideOwlStatue.jpg
FULL STORY: https://www.96fm.com.au/entertainment/mitcham-council-x-rated-playground-statue-owl/
 
I showed Techy the Catholic 'bread' statue and the owl and received a horrified guffaw.

Thing is, they're dicks. The statues haven't arrived out of thin air, they've been researched, sketched and usually modelled in miniature and shown to the customer first.
The shape is not an accident. It's not exactly deliberate, it's unconscious, but it's not a coincidence.

Used to have a job where I'd see a railway enthusiasts' magazine being distributed, every issue of which featured a new original painting of a different steam locomotive placed diagonally across the front page. The angle was presumably chosen to show off as many features as possible, but from a distance it looked like an erection. Seeing the entire print run spread out for delivery was a surreal experience.

I found it hilarious. It amazed me that nobody else seemed to notice this resemblance.
My conclusion was that as I mainly worked with men who were all ostensibly straight (this was the '70s, a grim time for gay rights) there was a sort of dick-blindness going on.

A man who remarked on the similarity would be called gay and picked on. Even noticing it might make a man worry about his sexuality.
So either the men were unconsciously filtering out the troubling resemblance OR having erections was so much a part of their psyche that they genuinely didn't notice when something looked like one.

Trying to think of how to explain that last point, I came up with bras.
If a woman examines a contraption to be worn on the shoulders like a backpack, especially with a chest strap, she might imagine how it would sit on her body in terms of how a bra fits: wide or narrow straps, how low the front structure dips, how the part across the back lies and so on.
This is so natural to a woman that she wouldn't even bother to express it, whereas to a man it's just a backpack.
Dunno if that helps.
 
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