September 18, 2014

Hofman’s giant rabbit burnt by accident

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:31 pm

Rotterdam-based Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, known for his giant yellow rubber ducks and huge plush toys around the world, has had his big bunny rabbit in Taiwan burnt by mistake.

Firefighters claim that the fire which torched the 24-metre-tall rabbit, created for the annual Taoyuan Land Art Festival, was ignited by welding sparks from workers disassembling festival structures nearby. Local authorities might seek compensation from contractors for the blaze.

Commissioned by the Taiwanese government, Hofman’s latest installation project had been hugely popular, with more than two million visitors to the festival paying a visit to the giant rubber mammal. The ‘moon rabbit’ is a symbol of altruism and love in the legend of the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival, which took place on September 8.

Other fun creations by Hofman include big slow slugs and a festive aardvark (picture above).

(Link: www.scmp.com, Photo: www.florentijnhofman.nl)

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October 6, 2012

Artist Tinkebell reports snails stolen by activist reporter

Filed under: Animals,Architecture by Branko Collin @ 3:57 pm

Controversial artist Tinkebell has announced she will report a theft with the police after a TV Rijnmond reporter took two snails from an exhibit with him. TV Rijnmond handed over the snails to Dierenbescherming (‘Animal Protection’, an association with 200,000 members and 31 local chapters) for further study.

Tinkebell is currently exhibiting some 1,000 live snails with beads glued to them as part of a larger exhibition at the Villa Zebra children’s museum called Ah, wat lief! (‘So sweet’). The exhibition is supposed to explore and challenge how children look at animals—which ones do they find cute, and which ones do they find horrid.

Earlier Tinkebell exhibits centered around exposing the hypocrisy of animal lovers by doing the exact same thing they do to animals, but within a completely different context. In one instance she made a leather purse, with the leather from her own cat. She also let hamsters run around a showroom while they were imprisoned in tiny plastic balls she had purchased at a pet store, something for which she was prosecuted but ultimately acquited.

In an article on left-wing blog Joop.nl Tinkebell explains how she got the idea of adorning snails with beads in the first place:

I have been painting all the snails I find in my own garden for years. [One day I spotted my neighbour salting his garden to kill snails and] I began to wonder where the snails came from, where they were going and how old they would get. In order to answer my own questions as well as try to change my neighbour’s mind, I started to paint numbers on the snails in my garden. There were many of them…

A year later and much to my surprise I saw that the snails were still moving through my garden, numbers and all. Wow! So then I numbered the unmarked copies in a different colour.

Another year passed and now three generations of painted snails were moving among my plants, and the year after I started with a new ‘tactic’, that of ‘beautifying’. I added glitter, flowers and little paintings. Each year my snails looked different, and that is how I kept track of different generations.

(Photo by Helen Cook, some rights reserved)

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September 26, 2012

Big slow slugs in France by Florentijn Hofman

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 5:12 pm

Rotterdam artist Florentijn Hofman, the guy who brought us the big cute ducks, big bunnies in Sweden and in Nijmegen, and much more greatness, just finished a show in Angers, France with giant slugs made of plastic bags (slideshow).

The work is made out of 40.000 plastic bags that move in the wind. The slugs are ascending this steep city staircase that leads up to a huge Catholic church, essentially signifying their slow crawl towards death. The work reminds us of religion, mortality, natural decay and the slow suffocation of commercialized societies.

(Link: www.designboom.com, photo florentijnhofman.nl)

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