Saturday 11 May 2013

Skywhale in Oz

The prize for Soppy Sculpture of the Week must go to Patricia Piccinini's Skywhale (2013). She seems to have taken a leaf out of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books: surely that's the head of his galactic turtle Great A'Tuin. Instead of four elephants on top, she's dangled giant pendulous udders below, presumably hoping to cater for Aussie tastes. We can't complain. This 34 metres-thingy-long jumbo hot-air balloon weighing half a tonne was made in Bristol, UK. So we got a large chunk of the £232,000 it cost. Skywhale was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Australia's capital Canberra and today it was officially launched outside the National Gallery of Australia. Tim Blair on The Telegraph website described it as the perfect symbol for the Aussie parliament, "a bloated, gaseous, multi-breasted monster feeding those who dwell in its poisonous shadow while leeching off the rest of us" (CLICK). No sense of humour! It's a gas.

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