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Strange Statues & Sculptures

If you were Scottish, you could call the vandal a tuber something similar.
 
A statue sporting a giant erection was unveiled in a Peruvian town. Contrary to what you may assume, it's consistent with the region's historical culture and artifacts.
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Stunned Peruvians crowd round to see new huge phallic statue

Imagine heading out for a casual stroll on New Year’s Day to try and shake off the last dregs of your hangover, and you see a new statue has been erected in your town in the distance.

Then you get closer to find, it truly has been erected – because its main feature is a huge penis…

That was actually the case for residents close to Moche, in the western province of Trujillo in Peru ...

The 10ft tall indigenous statue was installed to mark the new year, but local reports say the event surprised people and drivers passing the area. ...

Moche district mayor, Cesar Arturo Fernandez, said the statue was donated by a local plastics artist who wanted to contribute something cultural to the area.

He added: ‘A plastics artist asked for permission to install it there. We have always promoted two types of huaco: huaco busts and erotic ones.

‘In our culture, it does not represent eroticism but faith to God. In addition, sexuality must be seen as something normal and natural.’

‘Huaco’ is the Peruvian term for earthen vessels and other pottery works by indigenous people of the Americas. They are often found in ancient burial sites and temples. ...
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FULL STORY: https://metro.co.uk/2022/01/03/stun...ound-to-see-new-huge-phallic-statue-15857240/
 
A huge sculpture of a naked man ‘in all his glory’ has been dubbed ‘East Anglia’s answer to the Angel of the North’ after being put up next to the A12.
The statue was erected in Yoxford, near Aldeburgh in Suffolk last November after property billionaire Jon Hunt commissioned it for his luxury holiday retreat Wilderness Reserve.

Artist Laurence Edwards designed the new Yoxman statue for Cockfield [Arf] Hall – a Grade One listed private house dating back to the 16th century.

He wanted his work to ‘reflect the gnarly bark of ancient oaks growing in the parkland around Yoxford’ with its arms likened to ‘oaken branches’.
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Trevp666 said:
There is a statue of a 'Tripod' in Woking.
This is because in the original "War of the Worlds" novel, the first of the invaders from Mars lands on a common nearby.
(I dunno who the bloke in the picture is)
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I invited Techy to google 'Woking Sculpture' so he'd see that, and he was bowled over. He's a HUGE WOTW fan. :)

Took him to see the stage show a couple of years back and he was entranced. It was pretty fantastic.

(We went on one of my trains and were bumped up to First, and when one of my mates offered to help a posh passenger with her bags I asked if she'd do mine too. She nearly fell for it and I copped a torrent of affectionate Mancunian abuse. :rollingw:)
 
They asked for a statue of King Edward?

That was meant to be a feeble response to the potato statue, but all these other posts appeared without warning. Could be due to the cabling people fiddling with the internet connections in the road at the same time as the water company are trying to flood it!
 
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Here's a case in which a surreal sculpture installed as a protest against government interference has been embraced and designated for preservation, much to the chagrin of the original owner's heir.

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I have a 25ft shark sticking out of my house – I’m locked in a bitter row with the council who are making life hell

THE owner of a house with a 25ft shark plunging through its roof is locked in a bitter battle with the council.

Magnus Hanson-Heine, 34, inherited the Headington Shark in Oxford from his late dad Bill, who commissioned the artwork without planning permission in 1986. ...

The huge fibreglass and steel fish was installed in secret to protest against censorship, state warfare and planning restrictions, resulting in a six-year-long battle to keep the sculpture up.

But after attracting hundreds of visitors from around the world, the Shark has been nominated to appear on the Oxford Heritage Asset Register ... - something Magnus says goes against everything it stands for. ...

"If you think of it as a tourist attraction, which I'm sure many people do, then you'll think what the council is trying to do is a good thing.

"So you have to be pretty aware of exactly what the shark message is.

“I think it’s political manoeuvring at best and actually it almost feels like they are stealing my house.” ...

And he said he was furious the council was "missing the point". ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17433838/huge-headington-shark-house-heritage-listing/
 
The FT cover image was preserved on Paul Jackson's "Random encounters with the unusual" blog site. Here's the introductory excerpt from his article about the shark and the controversy it spawned.
The Headington Shark

I first saw the Headington Shark in March 1994 on the front cover of Fortean Times, and in June this year I finally got to see it in the flesh.

The Headington Shark “crash landed” head first in to the roof of 2 New High Street, Headington, Oxford early on the morning of Saturday 9th August 1986, 41 years to the day that the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

The 299kg, 7.6m (25ft) long painted fibreglass shark was the brain child of the property owner Bill Heine and sculptor John Buckley. Known formally us “Untitled 1986”, when Heine was asked what the purpose of the shark was, his reply was apparently: "The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation... It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki"

After its installation the shark became a local topic of controversy and a 6 year battle commenced between Heine and Oxford City Council, who wanted the shark removed. ...
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FULL STORY: http://unusual-encounters.blogspot.com/2016/07/headington-shark.html
 
A California doctor is now the Guinness record holder for creating the world's largest 3D-printed statue of a person.

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California doctor's 3D-printed sculpture breaks Guinness World Record

A Southern California doctor broke a Guinness World Record by assembling a 3D-printed sculpture of a human measuring 19 feet and 10 inches tall.

Dr. Vinson Eugene Allen of Gardena said he made his first 3D-printed sculpture of a doctor to adorn a Los Angeles billboard advertising his urgent care centers. ...

Allen said people suggested to him the statue could be a Guinness World Record, but when he researched the record for largest 3D-printed sculpture of a human, he found it wasn't quite large enough.

Allen decided to create a second, larger statue that he dubbed The Statue of Inspiration. The 3D-printed figure of a doctor stands 19 feet and 10 inches tall. He said it took 12 weeks for a team of nine people to print the pieces of the statue and assemble them. ...

Allen's sculpture took the record from British man James Bruton, who assembled a 3D-printed sculpture of a person in 2017 that stood at 11 feet and 10 inches tall.
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/03/01/Guinness-World-Records-3D-printed-sculpture/4851646164182/
 
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Swifty said:
Fortean Times once front covered the house with the fake shark sticking out of it's roof ...
The son of the man who now owns the house is now in the news for refusing to answer if he wants his house to be given listed status.
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Update ... Whether the son ever answered or not, the local authorities have designated the shark house a protected heritage site.
UK Shark House owner dismayed at getting protected status

The 25-foot tall (7.6 meter) sculpture of a shark crashing through the roof of Magnus Hanson-Heine’s house in rural Oxford, England, is now a protected landmark — and he’s not happy about it.

Hanson-Heine loves the installation, erected by his father and a local sculptor in 1986 as an anti-war, anti-nuke protest that still remains relevant now as bombs fall on Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin rattles his nuclear weapons.

But he says the Oxford City Council ignored his father’s other message this week when it designated the structure a heritage site that makes a “special contribution” to the community. Bill Heine installed the shark without the approval of local officials because he didn’t think they should have the right to decide what art people see, and the council spent years trying to remove the sculpture.

“Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd on the face of it,” Hanson-Heine, a quantum chemist, said in an interview with The Associated Press. ...
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FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...lear-weapons-a6b004db12f62eac6fa3efdd2e962757
 
Does that mean any potential buyer is forced to keep the sculpture in place?
 
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