Gargoyles – Glorious Gruesome Grotesques

Gargoyles – they are strange, bizarre, unpleasant or just plain ugly. They have been hovering around our towns and cities for centuries, for so long that it can be forgotten that they have meaning and purpose. Take a tour of the weird world of the gargoyle.

Image Credit Flickr User Beggs

A gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque statue, and they were designed to convey water away from the roof and the sides of large buildings. We associate them mostly with medieval times thanks to a certain hunchback but they have been around much longer than that. They are more than just scary statues as if they were not there then the mortar between the stones of their buildings would, in time, erode away and the building would fall over. Many gargoyles take the shape of animals and – lost to our modern minds – these creatures were chosen for a purpose. This is why...

The Maijishan Grottoes - Artistic Treasure of China’s Past

China has four major Buddhist cave complexes - by far the most visited being the Longmen caves. Less well known are the Maijishan Grottoes. Situated in Gansu Province in the northwest of China, this astonishing example of cave architecture hewn from rock consists of over 7,000 Buddhist sculptures not to mention almost 1000 square meters of murals.

Image Credit Flickr User Mke1963

Meenakshi Amman Temple – India’s Dazzling Shrine Saturated with Statues

The city of Madurai in the South Eastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and has been a functioning metropolis for over two thousand years.

At its heart lies something extraordinary – a temple to the Hindu Goddess Parvati and her husband consort, Shiva. 

Image Credit Flickr User WarpEd

The Statues of Dublin and their Notorious Nicknames

Dublin is littered with statues.  It seems close to a national obsession in Ireland to erect them.  Perhaps not far behind is the predilection of the inhabitants of this fair city to give them nicknames.  A stroll near the Ha’penny Bridge will bring you to these two charming ladies, having a rest after shopping for their families.   They were placed there as part of a project to celebrate the millennium of the city in 1988 and represent the ordinary women of the city.

Image Credit Flickr User Infomatique

Image Credit Flickr User markhealy

Charmingly (or not) one of the bags was snatched a little while after the statue was placed there.  What statement the unknown thief was making is unknown but the bag was made of bronze and it was very, very heavy.  Fortunately it was returned, but what of the local nickname for this amiable salute to the womenfolk of Dublin.  Why, the ‘Hags with the Bags’ of course.

Here Be Dragons: Amazing Statues and Sculptures of Dragons Around the World

In the Middle Ages the words hic sunt dracones (here be dragons) appeared on a number of maps to indicate dangerous or unexplored territories.  Yet dragons are still among us, dotted all over the globe.  From Europe to Asia and over to the Americas, ferocious beasts (and some a little less so…) protect our cities and temples.  Here is a collection of amazing dragon statues and sculptures from around the world.

Sneinton, England

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The Garden of the Monsters

In sixteenth century Italy the nobility would often leave testimony of their greatness through the form of religious art.  Not so Pier Francesco Orsini.  He wanted to be remembered in an entirely different way – through his Park of the Monsters. He did not want his monuments to please – he wanted them to astonish.

Image Credit Flickr User workflo

Tucked away in Bomarzo almost seventy kilometers from Rome, the gardens are located in a section of woodland near to the bottom of the valley in which the Orsini family castle was built.  Here, after a career as a mercenary, the latest of the Orsini line settled in to a life of middle-aged Epicureanism.  The park is perhaps holds a mirror to his imagination (or even state of mind) after a lifetime of political and social turmoil.

Haw Par Villa – Unusual Singapore Theme Park

In 1937 two brothers from Singapore had a dream – they wanted to help people to learn, remember and pass on traditional Chinese values as expressed through myth, legend and the tenets of Confucianism.  They already had a small venue – the Tiger Balm - but wanted to broaden the appeal to a wider audience.  So was born the idea of extending the place to incorporate a garden in which Chinese legends would come to life.

Image Credit Flickr User Gruntzooki

Let the monkey warn you, however.  If you are of a nervous disposition, perhaps it is time to consider whether you wish to continue on this particular journey.

The Monuments of North Korea

The age of huge monuments to political ideology came to an end for many with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  In the rush towards change, many massive statues of communist leaders and heroes were toppled or consigned to scrap yards.  The time for colossal testaments to the cream of communism was, it seems, well and truly over. Or perhaps not. No one seems to have told the North Koreans.  The East Asian country, still in the thrall of totalitarian and Stalinist policies combined with a cult of personality based around a single family is awash with grandiose monuments.  Here are just some of them.

The Juche Tower

Image Credit Flickr User Julian_Limes

Image Credit Flickr User (stephan)

The Juche Tower was part of a flurry of moments erected in the 1980s.  Juche is the system created by Kim Il-sung, the North’s first Prime Minister.  It consists of self-sufficiency, self-reliance and nationalism – effectively a closed economy which must stagger along without external assistance or international trade. Autarky, as the self-reliance is known had been previously practiced by Nazi Germany (with the realisation that because war was inevitable with some of the countries it traded with, this could not be relied upon in the totalitarian future with plenty of lebensraum that was envisioned).

Rapid City: The City of Presidents

Visitors to the historic downtown of South Dakota’s Rapid City are in for something of a surprise. Turn a corner and you come face to face with a life size bronze statue of the USA’s first ever President, George Washington (above, who was in office from 1789 – 1797).  Turn another and you come across his successor, George Adams. In fact there is a statue of each US President in the city (bar the current incumbent).  As well as being a remarkable tribute to the leaders of America, it's a great way to memorize the presidents. Take a look at each, in order of his time as POTUS.

John Adams - 1797 - 1801

Image Credit Flickr User jvstin

The project began in 2000 with the pattern of placement throughout the Downtown district specifically chosen to give those doing the ‘tour’ a rational structure while avoiding any favouritism to a particular president or party.

Nelson Mandela: A Tribute in Art

Nelson Mandela: 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013

When I was a teenager in the early 1980s I think my first encounter with the name Nelson Mandela was probably through a badge.  Although my memory is a little fuzzy about exactly when, it was most likely 1983, the year before the Special AKA band released what is still in most Top 20 Political Songs lists – Free Nelson Mandela.  The song made it in to the top ten in the UK hit parade. The badge, though, with its typically 80s font, was ubiquitous.

Image Credit Flickr User Ben Sutherland
As well as being worn to protest the on-going incarceration of the South African politician by his own government, the badge was also another way for us to show our displeasure with our own: Maggie Thatcher and her cohorts were currently smashing their way through UK industry like a wrecking ball.  The only pictures we got to see of Nelson Mandela were those taken before his trial and imprisonment – and that had been in 1962, over twenty years previously.   The man could already be representative of causes other than his own – a kind of marker of general political and personal duty: this transference from individual to universal symbol is something that few others have achieved.
Image Credit Flickr User Vilseskogen
The potency of this charisma was bound to find outlets through artistic expression both of the monumental and the personal kind. After his release and his inevitable rise to political power, Mandela’s face became (and I do not use the word without hesitation) iconographic, even in life.  He became a living, breathing symbol of the struggle for personal liberty, for freedom of speech, for universal education and suffrage – and more: I could probably leave a space here and each of you could fill in the gap with your own reason for admiring this man, surely one of the most pivotal in contemporary world history.

Gromit Unleashed!

If you are a fan of Wallace and Gromit, the lovable but hapless inventor and his canine fixer, then you might want to pack your bags and head to the city of Bristol in the south west of England.  Gromit has taken flight from his northern home of Wigan and arrived in Bristol in the form of eighty amazing five foot tall sculptures.  The whole experience is rather cleverly named Gromit Unleashed.

Image Credit © Flickr User sa//y

The sculptures arrived in a number of ways.  Some came by train...

Lord Nelson's New Hat

Visitors to London will be in for something of a surprise when they crane their eyes upwards to the statue atop Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. Overnight, with the help of a crane, Lord Nelson has received new hat.  His is one of 24 of London’s most famous statues to be given the treatment, as part of a week long Hatwalk.

Martial Arts Practice at Bang Kung Military Training Camp

Image Credit Flickr User Tom BK

Go on, admit it! Just for a moment you thought these guys were real. No? Well, I did – and perhaps I do need my eyes tested but these gentlemen can be found at the Bang Kung military training camp in Samut Songkhram, Thailand. Our guess is that they are there to demonstrate defensive techniques to new recruits rather than being art for art’s sake. Whatever the reason I think they are pretty cool!

The Lions of Bath – Pride in the City

Image Credit Flickr User Fortaguada

The City of Bath, the historic city situated in the south west of England, is popular with tourists from all over the world.  However the good citizens of this two thousand year old city woke up this week to be greeted by visitors of a completely different type – a different species altogether in fact.

Image Credit Flickr User Daz Smith

Image Credit Flickr User Gazza of Bath

The biggest outdoor art event the city (which in its entirety is a World Heritage Site) has ever hosted sees a pride of one hundred lions take to the streets.  You have surmised already though that these lions are not flesh and blood – they are life size individually decorated sculptures.  The contemporary wives of Bath (and indeed their husbands) are safe on the streets.

Image Credit Flickr User Rose of Academe

Over thirty of the pride has been installed and the lions will be situated at sites across the city until October.  But why these leonine lovelies?  Why not some other animal?  For a start, the lion has been the symbol of royal England for almost a thousand years.

Image Credit Flickr User Fortaguaga

Richard the Lionheart, the missing king in the Robin Hood films, more often than not played by Sean Connery (or at least that’s how it feels) for those of you who like your history Hollywood style was the first to create the three lions symbol of which you may be aware from soccer tournaments at least.  Both of his parents had lions to represent their houses and he added a third.  The rest is history as they say.

Image Credit Flickr User Daz Smith

Image Credit Flickr User Gazza of Bath

So far so symbolic.  Additionally, this huge art installation is an attempt to build on the ‘pride’ that many Bathonians already feel (and incidentally, the bathonian is a period during the Jurassic, names after the city).  Local communities, businesses and people have sponsored each lion and they have then been decorated and people by craftspeople and artists.

Image Credit Flickr User Rose of Academe

You name the art genre and you will probably find a lion which can claim it as its own.  From fine artists to ceramicists, mosaic artists to those whose works cannot be easily pigeonholed there will be a host of styles in the city this summer.

Image Credit Flickr User Rose of Academe

The installation will culminate, in October, with a congregation of all of the one hundred members of the pride in front of Bath’s famous Royal Crescent, in a ceremony which is to be known as the Lions Roar Goodbye – that should certainly be an event to remember and a site to see.

Image Credit Flickr User Daz Smith

Image Credit Flickr User Gazza of Bath

The lions will then be auctioned off and the proceeds will go to a number of local charities with some of the proceeds being used to fund art projects in the city in the future.  For the near future however, this gigantic pride of lions will add to the already 500 plus leonine symbols throughout the city.

Image Credit Flickr User Gazza of Bath

If you ever needed an excuse to put Bath on your itinerary, this is a good one.  Go on, take a dip in Bath and have a roaring time!

Thanks especially to Flickr user Fortaguaga and Gazza of Bath who have kindly given permission for their copyrighted pictures to be used here.

The Last Secret of the Moai

Image Credit Flickr User Individuo

The impassive monoliths of Easter Island have for many years flummoxed and baffled archaeologists. The theory had for many years gone that out of all these magnificent moai, those inland had simply been abandoned by the tracks.

Image Credit Flickr User Robert Nyman

Some suggested they were possibly too heavy to cart to the perimeter of the island. Thor Heyerdhal (left) the famous adventurer explorer suggested that they had no spiritual meaning whatsoever and were most likely the ones that were simply left to lie at the side of the road because for whatever reason they did not make it to the coast.

 Image Credit Flickr User Viajar24h

A new team of academics from the United Kingdom have come up with an alternative suggestion – and perhaps the moai are finally to give up their last secret. The monoliths, it is now argued, played a pivotal role in the island’s road system and were left in their places much more specifically than the old consensus ever suggested. Contrary to the Norwegian explorer’s hypothesis the new evidence suggests that they had a religious, possibly mystic raison d'être.

Image Credit Flickr User Magic World

Legend has it that the statues arrived at their final resting places when the king of the island called upon the gods and ordered the statues to walk to their destinations. He would have had to have had an incredibly long reign as the statues were sculpted over a period of three hundred years from 1200 to 1500CE. It was more likely then that the islanders took the monoliths to their end point by an elaborate system of rollers and A frames made from the island’s soon to be decimated tree population.

Image Credit Flickr User Robert Nyman

The above picture shows just how big a moai can be - and that is big. However, the inland effigies are now considered to have been placed not with the assumed randomness because the islanders were not able to move them any further but with a deliberate intent. The new team have discovered that each has its own plinth (just like the ones on the coast) now buried and this would very much suggest that they were not simply left to their own devices but that there was design to their placement.

Image Credit FLickr User Avodrocc

These platforms were discovered by the use of state of the art imaging equipment and the teams from University College London and Manchester University now believe that Heyerdahl was in fact mistaken. These giants, some of them weighing up to eighty six tons were placed there for a reason – and that reason was the very quarry from which they were extracted.

Image Credit Flickr User Magical World

The academic team believes that the monoliths formed part of a complex religious avenue, criss crossing the island but eventually ending up at the quarry where the moai were born. Although the vast majority of the inland maoi of the archipelago are overturned they now think that this is simply the result of standing up for too long – some of them up to eight hundred years – rather than abandonment ab origine.

Image Credit Flickr User P R

They have worked out that all of them would have looked inward on to the roads and that as the traveller nears the quarry (known as Rabo Raraku) their incidence becomes much more frequent. So, as the religious pilgrims got closer to the volcano cones of the quarry, thought by Polynesian cultures to be openings to the underworld, more and more of the statues would appear, creating an entrancing stone culmination to the pilgrimage and heralding the entry of the ancient islanders to a sacred place, indeed their most sacred of places.

Image Credit Flickr User Magical World

Now it has been explained – perhaps not finally nevertheless – it does all seem rather obvious. Have the inscrutable statues really given up their last secret? Even though it's not a holy grail like garcinia, there is a review to say otherwise.

 Image Credit Flickr User Avodrocc