Horsing around

Usually when you think about horse art you have in your mind the image of a horse, paintbrush in mouth, knocking up something abstract on a canvas. Not in Hamilton. Another city obsessed with celebrating the shambles that was New Zealand’s inclusion in WWI, Hamilton has reached out to the horse to side-step the not-another-dead-man option. 

And there is some reason to do this.  Of the combined 25 million deaths in that war it was horses that represented over 30 percent. So, Hamilton was on the money when The Warhorse Charitable Trust invited art consultant Paula Savage to go global. Savage homed in on Mimmo Paladino known internationally as the go-to horse guy. He even has a horse sculpture 'at the entrance to the New Town Plaza in Hong Kong' according to Savage. So with one lot of horses safely in the funding pipeline, what about all the people in Hamilton who like ‘horses that look like horses’? 

Enter the Waikato Equestrian Memorial Board. It has come up with a drawing of a horse that fills the h-t-l-l-h requirements and offers a few irresistible add ons that can prove a challenge for much contemporary art - ‘child-friendly, able to be climbed over and sat upon.’ Now it too is out there raising money. It's horse of course will be easier to source (sorry) with lots of sculpture businesses up and down the country poised to knock up a full sized bronze one for anyone with cash. Exhauted? We’ll leave you with prescient Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock who was ahead of us all: 'without thinking' Leacock wrote, 'he flung himself upon his horse and rode off madly in all directions.'

Images: top left, exploring sitting-on possibilities, top right, on the big side for a horse that looks like a horse but could be dramatic in the right place at the right time. Middle, the sort of bronze horse you can order from China at http://sculpture.en.alibaba.com if you want more than one. Bottom left, not realistic enough to fool the kid on the left and bottom right, the more abstract approach

All fired up

Continuing today's animal theme bad news for lovers of giant animal sculpture installations in the public domain as Florentijn Hofman's over-sized rabbit on show in Taiwan catches on fire. The rabbit was being shifted from its site to be recycled when a truck set fire to the grass nearby.
Image: the Hofman rabbit ablaze (OTN reconstruction)

Last Woltz

A regular OTN reader (it's R again, thanks R) asked how "if you claim to be giant sculpture central, you missed out on The Kelpies?" (two super-sized 30 meters high horse heads "by sculptor Andy Scott and erected on the meeting of the Forth and Clyde canals late last year.) Well the thing is up to now we've had a site-wide ban on large-scale sculptures of partial animals (heads, legs etc.), but that was up to now.

Dog days

As you will have noticed on OTN if things get desperate at the end of the week we reach for something big to entertain you. This week it is giant dog sculptures. You'll be familiar with Jeff Koons’s Puppy but who’d have thought anyone would invite Richard Jackson’s Bad dog lift a leg on the Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art. Big dog, good dog.

Images: top, Richard Jackson Bad dog and second row from right, Dutch dog and Sun spot a big dog work in Colorado. Next down, Jeff Koons Puppy and Balloon dog and bottom, Best friend in corrugated iron by DonsBigArt and Yoshitomo Nara at the Aomori Museum in Japan.

Big ears: rabbit division

Giant Rabbit sculptures. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

Image: Florentijn Hofman‘s 13 meter high yellow rabbit in Örebro, Sweden (Thanks yet again D)

Taking the meer out of meercat

In its relentless search for oversized realistic animal sculptures OTN has discovered cloud breakers in the form of horses, moose and deer. Drawn to the conclusion that it was some kind of psychic marriage between man and hooves, we abandoned the search for the fabled 60-metre high guinea pig. Now a reader has presented a clear winner in the giant animal sculpture and what's more it's in the rare combustible material category. This Meercat stands at 36 feet high and, in case you think it is a mindless one-off, our OTN operative tells us that Chris Sadler and his wife Cheryl have been coming up with straw sculptures since 1998. Thanks R

Other OTN large animal sculpture stories here

No idea

Ok it’s not a moose, but following up OTN’s research project on the history of large animal sculpture, here is a giant deer from way back.

Horsing around

Everyone who applauded the giant moose initiative, on Vithatten mountain in Sweden, will be delighted to hear that the UK has the opportunity to have its own oversized animal in a landscape. Mark Wallinger, ex horse painter and Turner Prize winner, is proposing a white horse to overlook the Ebbsfleet Valley. At 33 times life size it will kick Moose butt.
Images: Mark Wallinger's big horse on a hill concept. Bottom, moose

Oh deer

Seriously, the world of sculpture doesn’t get any better than this.

You are looking at a 45m tall, 47m long moose that will hold up to 350 people. It is to be built on the top of Vithatten mountain in northern Sweden. The people of Vithatten are claiming it as the largest moose in the world. Meanwhile, the people of Wellington are asking their Sculpture Trust, “Where’s our moose?”