Monday, June 27, 2016

Crawl space

In the nearly ten years since OTN started, we’ve posted a lot of weird/creepy public sculpture (in fact a post in our first month was about that bronze dog stuck onto the guy’s leg in Wellington) but in the eye-popping stakes, the Prague Television Tower is a clear winner. Nothing (apart from people like us posting about it) can prepare you for the astonishment of seeing ten bronze babies trying to crawl up this gigantic concrete structure. The babies were supposed to be temporary when they were installed by Czech artist David Černý in 2001 but although residents loathed the TV Tower, they knew a great thing when they saw it. The following year the crawlers were attached permanently by popular demand. Černý is known for his humorous and provocative work including the London bus doing press-ups that became one of those internet sensations a few years back. And presciently, OTN wrapped him up in one of our regular baby-sculptures-you-gotta-see surveys three years ago.