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Strange Statues & Sculptures

Frideswide said:
Look on my beard ye Mighty - and despair?

Do we know where that statue is?
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It's The sleeping Barbarossa in the Kyffhäuser Mountains.
From the OutdoorActive website -

The Barbarossa or Kyffhäuser legend

According to the legend, Emperor Frederick I., also known as Barbarossa, did not die but was bewitched in a cave underneath the Kyffhäuser Mountains. There he sleeps on his throne, his faithful servants at his side, awaiting his return.

His head rests in his hands and his red beard grows around the stone table. Every one hundred years he wakes up and sends one of his servants to look whether the ravens still circle the mountain. If so, the emperor goes back to sleep. The ravens represent discord and misfortune and will be cast out by an eagle at the end.

According to the legend, his beard needs to grow around the table once – in other versions three times – to disenchant the spell. If he should wake up one day, he will set out to his last battle between good and evil at Walserfeld.
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Steven said:
Isn't Robin Hood also one of these folk-heroes-in-a-hill who are supposed to return to save us when everything's going to poop? Anyway, they're taking their bloody time, the lazy twits...
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Indeed! I shall come over all Bad Lecturer if they do rock up.

What time is this meant to be?
Where is your homework?
I seem to be missing essays from the following...
 
In the news again.

The owner of a famous house with a shark sticking out of its roof has criticised a council refusing him permission to rent it out on Airbnb.

Magnus Hanson-Heine said the Headington Shark house was shown off by Oxford City Council in its local plan for the area but treated as "just any other place" when the decision was made.

"I would like them to leave the shark and me alone," he said.

Oxford City Council said the house was not in a site suitable for short lets.

The shark, which was controversial when it appeared in 1986, was added to the Oxford Heritage Asset Register in 2022, which recognises places of important local cultural, social or historic value.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-68083194
 
Australia’s oldest full-length statue?

The statue, created by a convict in the 1830s, depicts what researchers say is very probably Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, the fourth governor of Van Diemen’s Land (as Tasmania was then known) and creator of the notorious penal settlement Port Arthur.

His penis protrudes from his button fly and evidence of 19th-century internal plumbing suggests the artist’s original brief was to create colonial Australia’s first urinating human fountain.
“We’re talking about a most extraordinary political statement here,” he said. “The first freestanding western-style sculpture created in Australia, and what is it but a statement about the contempt held towards the government of the day? It’s pretty amazing. There’s nothing to compare it with.”

When the museum took possession of George in 2023, little was known about the statue’s origins or age. The piece was donated by “a prominent Hobart family” who wished to remain anonymous, Tassell said. It is believed the family had held the statue for seven decades.

A year on, research has established that the sandstone used for the sculpture was quarried in Ross, in Tasmania’s midlands, and the style of dress George sports – carved in intricate detail by the artist – dates the work to between 1820 and 1840.

George’s creator has been identified as Daniel Herbert, an English stonemason whose death sentence for highway robbery was commuted to transportation for life in 1827.

Researchers have concluded that the benefactor most likely to have commissioned the work was William Kermode, a wealthy Tasmanian maritime merchant and midlands landowner

“Given the depth of ill-feeling between Kermode and Arthur, it is feasible to consider that Kermode might commission a functioning statue of Governor Arthur urinating over the people of the colony,”
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Some mighty odd candidates for the Fourth Plinth.

A giant sweet potato, a colourful ice cream van and a cat ornament are among the sculptures proposed for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Since 1999 a different artwork has stood on the famous central London space for two years, with winners picked from a shortlist.
Other works on the latest list, which will go on display in 2026 and 2028, include a bird's nest and a golden bronze sculpture of a woman's head.
The winners will be announced in March.

Seven artworks have made the latest shortlist, with two of those set to be commissioned. They are:

The Smile You Send Returns to You​

Chila Kumari Singh Burman, The Smile You Send Returns To You

Created by Chila Burman, the sculpture reflects her father's voyage to the UK from India on the HMS Battory, with his ice cream van, The Rocket, taking centre stage.

Believe in Discontent​

Ruth Ewan, Believe in Discontent

The title for Ruth Ewan's giant ornamental cat is taken from words spoken by suffragist Charlotte Despard, who would often address crowds in Trafalgar Square - with the artwork reflecting the square's role in history and how women from the suffrage movement would be portrayed as cats in the media as an insult. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68316338
 
The strange park of Veijo Rönkkönen

If you were asked to name a statue from the top of your head, you’ll probably say “The Venus of Milo”, as it might be one of earliest encounters with sculpture we all had. But if you ask this question in the Finnish town of Parikalla, in the south-east of Finland and next to the Russian border, the answer will surely be the strange sculptures of Veijo Rönkkönen.

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Veijo Rönkkönen (born in 1944 and passed away in 2010) was a Finnish artist and sculptor. During his youth, while working at a paper factory, he started to make sculptures. He finished his first sculpture in 1961 and continued sculpting all his life, finishing around 450 statues.

All these statues are now standing in the park-like garden of the house where he lived with his parents.

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Veijo never stopped living in that house, and he was a man who loved being alone. By placing his statues in the park, he made them available for anyone to see, but he never came out to talk to any of the visitors. He instead left a guestbook with a sign asking visitors to leave a note.

Veijo never agreed to lend his statues to museums or expositions. When asked about it, he said he must “check with the statues first”. They must have always said no, since up to today none of the statues have left their places in the garden.

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In 2007, three years before his death, he won the Finlandia prize (a multi-disciplinar prize granted annually), but he didn’t attend the ceremony to receive it since he didn’t want to leave his house. It was received by his brother in his name.

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The facial expressions of the statues, made from concrete, are part of what makes this group of statues unique. Their expressions are scary, since they aren’t fully realistic: instead they come close to the Uncanny Valley. Some of them also have real human teeth, and sound effects that make the whole park even creepier.

https://en.biginfinland.com/park-veijo-ronkkonen/

maximus otter
 
After life of curses, miracles, Colonel Sanders statue laid to rest
By KENTARO UECHI/ Staff WriterMarch 20, 2024

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15204594

OSAKA—A memorial service was held here for a figure beloved by Hanshin Tigers fans but also reviled as the source of the team’s decades-long championship drought.

A statue of Colonel Sanders, with its white beard and white suit badly stained and deteriorating, was laid to rest after a rather peculiar life. ...

Finally, in 2023, the Tigers defeated the Orix Buffaloes to win their first Japan Series title in 38 years. The curse had been lifted, and some Hanshin fans celebrated in Colonel Sanders costumes.

The KFC Dotonbori store is now closed. And the retrieved statue had deteriorated so much that it was difficult to store.

Although now a part of Japanese baseball lore, KFC Holdings Japan decided to dispose of the statue.

On March 8, the company held “ningyo kuyo,” a special memorial service for dolls and stuffed animals, for the Colonel Sanders statue at Sumiyoshi Taisha shrine in Osaka.

Takayuki Hanji, president of the company, and other executives attended the service, offered sake and fried chicken, and said goodbye.

The company revealed the sad news on March 19.

“We want to thank all of the fans for their friendship and love for the statue,” the company said in a statement
 
Trolls in the Sperrin Mountains.

Derry City & Strabane District Council The Stargazer troll resides in Davagh Forest near Northern Ireland's Dark Sky Park
Derry City & Strabane District Council

The Stargazer troll resides in Davagh Forest near Northern Ireland's Dark Sky Park

"Where I'm from, we don't really have hills, so when I saw Northern Ireland, it was like a fairy tale setting for my art."

Thomas Dambo is one of the world's leading recycle artists. Enthusiasm beams from the 44-year-old from Denmark when he speaks about his sculptures. In recent years he has become best known for his work on The Trail of a Thousand Trolls. It is a project that consists of more than 100 large, recycled wood sculptures featuring trolls of all shapes and sizes.

The sculptures have been installed in 17 countries, from the USA and France to Chile and China. Four trolls have recently made the island of Ireland's largest mountain range their home.

The Sperrin Mountains stretch across Mid Ulster for more than 40 miles, through County Tyrone and County Derry. The mountains have strong links to ancient Celtic myths and Neolithic giants, so the world-renowned artist said it was a perfect location.

He said: "In Denmark we have troll legends, I grew up with troll lullabies, so we say things like - 'this lake is the footstep of a troll', so it was very natural for to me to use them in my sculptures. I had seen the landscape of Northern Ireland in movies and things like that, so I just felt it would be a beautiful place to have my art."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-68706853
 
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