Thursday, May 08, 2008

No Waxwork, But an Angel

Tragically, it seems that we might never have a waxwork of Gordon Brown in Madame Tussaud's - according to some accounts, there's a poll of Tussaud's visitors going on, according to others they've already given up on the idea. It's a bit redundant anyway, as the man already looks as if he's formed out of some half-molten, unfleshly substance (cold porridge perhaps).
However, it seems we are to be treated to a gigantic Angel of the South - here are the contenders. Why on earth, you may ask, do we need this? The Angel of the North, an ugly thing which just about works in situ, was a sop to the chippy northerners to make them feel a little better about themselves (amazingly, they even liked it). We southerners need no such grotesquely oversized gestures. But if we are to have one, which will it be? The popular favourite (and therefore the likeliest winner) is clearly Mark Wallinger's kitsch and oddly boneless white horse, but personally I'd go for the Rachel Whiteread, on the grounds that she's a genuine and interesting artist (the only one who did anything worth looking at with the vacant Trafalgar Square plinth) and her awkward pile of rubble with the cast of a house perched on it somehow says something about the South of England, and about England as a whole. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of something that anyone's likely to want to hear... Any thoughts?

4 comments:

  1. Glad to uncover such total apathy about the Angel of the South - just proves we don't need or want the thing.

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  2. Well, there are at least three problems:

    (i) the ghastliness of the candidates;

    (ii) the irrelevance of the location (does Kent have an equivalent of the A1);

    (iii) the waste of my good pound: according to Wikipedia as far as two million thereof.

    Oh, and ignoring something in bad taste is, at least in England, not quite the same as apathy.

    Best regards

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  3. Nige, Gormleys rusty metal mickey has had a huge impact on the traffic statistics, the accident rate on that stretch of the A1 has increased enormously as drivers stare in amazement and shout "what the f..ks that" some say its art, others not. Personally, its a rusty metal mickey, put there by you know who, to increase the accident statistics and give more ammunition to the anti auto mob. Same reason in Kent? (I always thought that Jono,s cafe at the bottom of Wrotham Hill on the A20 was a great monument (in 1963), probably long gone now.

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  4. And Kent's got the white cliffs - surely enough for any county/country/South...

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