Hey Big Guy, feeling invisible? Put-on some funky clothes!

I was in Sydney last week for the quarterly NAVA board meeting. On Thursday, the day before the meeting, I walked to my hotel following my typical museum-hopping path starting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Circular Quay then to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in The Domain.

Like most major Australia cities Sydney has an impressive collection of larger-than-life bronze statues commemorating war heros, kings and queens and other notables. But these pieces have been there so long that they have basically become invisible to Sydneysiders. They are largely un-noticed except by the pigeons who use them as some of the only non-spiky landing places in town.

Last year a Japanese artist called Tatzu Nishi, as part of Kaldor Public Art Projects, installed an 'intervention' using the two huge bronze equestrian statues flanking the main entrance of AGNSW. It was a wonderfully enjoyable temporary work of art and I had a great laugh while enjoying it. You can read about this work, called 'War and peace and in between' at the Kaldor website:  Kaldor Art Projects - Tatzu Nishi

The article on Kaldor's website says Nishi's work focuses on 'making the everyday strange' and in doing so many people noticed and 'saw' the AGNSW's bronzes for the first time. It was a wonderful introduction to them.

So while walking to the AGNSW I saw another large bronze sculpture that had been changed:

King Edward VII - Dressed for Success!

The good King was wearing a natty hat and his horse was sporting striped fabric socks! As the upcoming weekend was the Grand Final match for several Australian football competitions and codes I wondered if pranksters had dressed the statue in football attire, but quickly determined that wasn't the case as today's teams, no matter what city or suburb they represent, don't wear big feather-capped hats in play.

This is off-topic a bit but it's a good place to diverge; did you know that the orientation of a statue horse's legs is sometimes thought to indicate how its rider died? Supposedly, and Snopes.com may disagree with this, 'both legs raised mean that the rider was KILLED IN BATTLE, one leg raised means the rider died LATER of wounds caused in battle, and all four legs on the ground means the rider died of NATURAL CAUSES,' says answers.com. 

King Edward VII - close up. Nice hat, dude!

So I had a closer look at fancy-pants King Edward VII and saw that this was part of Sydney's 'Art & About' program and that several statues had been dressed-up by local artists.

The Bard and his audience hadn't escaped the treatment:

Too fun, William Shakespeare ready to party!

Well done Sydney, and Sydney artists! I hope locals and visitors to Sydney will enjoy these fun works, and perhaps notice what might have been invisible until now.

Do you think we could get-up something like this in Adelaide?

NAVA - The National Association for the Visual Arts - Australia's Peak Visual Arts body