Howie, I think it mentioned that originally they were to publicise what genetically modified foods could look like if left uncountered.
Howie, I think it mentioned that originally they were to publicise what genetically modified foods could look like if left uncountered.
i like my foods modified in batter and deep fried, nothing wrong with them
While touring about in Scotland.. They have Cows painted up like these lambanana s...
It originated there I believe...
Originally Posted by naked lilac
Hi naked lilac
Actually this type of thing may be worldwide as an artform. Baltimore had fish that were variously decorated. Washington, D.C., had donkeys (for Democrats) and elephants (for Republicans) -- see below.
Chris
Washington, D.C., Elephant
Baltimore Police Fish
Christopher T. George
Editor, Ripperologist
Editor, Loch Raven Review
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/
Chris on Flickr and on MySpace
One of my daughter's pics a couple of years ago. Not quite sure where - might have been a train station in Manchester.
So this Rainbow Banana will on display?
I have noticed two already, one green one by the Metquarter and a Red one Inside the Plaza on Old Hall Street.
Gididi Gididi Goo.
Before your time, Max. But there were concrete cows in Milton Keynes back in 1978.
You can still find cows as hard as concrete.
They had lots of different coloured cows in Manchester a couple of years ago.
Last edited by PhilipG; 02-11-2008 at 12:03 AM.
I've been married to one for 28 years!You can still find cows as hard as concrete.
At lest the cows look like cows,the fish like fish,the elephant like an elephant but the Lambanana???
Get rid of them now!!
lambanana's
Well I like the lambanana's, they are much nicer than rats that look like cats, or is it the other way round? Or any other graffiti how ever cleverly done.
Superlambanana: Sparkling variations on a theme
Feb 11 2008
by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post
Once a figure of fun, we have now taken the Superlambanana to our hearts. Laura Davis reports
"IT SOUNDS revolting, silly and rude. What the hell has it got to do with Liverpool?" asked Bread star Jean Boht in 1998, some 10 years after some TV viewers had been asking the same question about her sitcom.
She wasn’t the only one quick to criticise the city’s newest piece of public art. Half lamb, half banana, many thought it would clash with its backdrop – too abstract for Liverpool’s fine Victorian architecture, and too vibrant and quirky for the drab 60s office blocks.
"What particular spirit does it represent?" asked then City Council leader Frank Prendergast, when told it was designed to reflect the Scouse zeitgeist.
Meanwhile, Alan Bleasdale’s first thought was for the late Liverpool sculptor Arthur Dooley, who created many works of public art, including the "Four Lads Who Shook the World" piece on Mathew Street.
"If Arthur was still here, he would be leading the march across the Pennines!" he declared.
Only the actress Margi Clarke seemed to guess the sculpture would tickle that famous Scouse sense of humour. "Well, at least it’s a vegetarian lamb," she quipped.
As we reported last week, from this month, smaller versions of the Superlambanana will be appearing across the city – in hotels, shopping centres and offices – proving that the initial reservations about introducing such an unusual creation to a place just beginning to come out of its depression years were unfounded.
Politicians often describe Liverpool as rising like a phoenix out of the ashes, a reference perhaps to the Liver Bird, but it is the Lambanana that has become the unofficial emblem of the city’s new found self-esteem.
Originally sited at the Pier Head for three months, during the Artrans- pennine 98 festival and Tate Liverpool’s 10th birthday celebrations, the 17ft sculpture was moved to a number of different locations around the city before settling outside JP Lamb & Sons, the ships chandlers at Wapping Dock. The owners of the suitably named JP Lamb, Sir Trevor Jones and his wife, Lady Doreen, soon found themselves taking care of their strange new neighbour.
"It became part of our family and our grandchildren had their photographs taken with it," says Lady Doreen, who was a committee member of the Liverpool Architecture & Design Trust, the organisation responsible for bringing the sculpture to the city.
"We kept it clean, and fed it and watered it, and any time there was a dirty mark on it we would touch it up. Our staff knew it was part of their job to look after it.
"At first I didn’t particularly like it, but it’s become part of Liverpool now and everybody loves it. When it was outside JP Lamb, people were always coming along to have their pictures taken with it."
Having provided the paint when the Superlambanana was first built, they kept a spare tin of it to cover any graffiti.
"When it came to us it had been in Williamson Square and it was in a mess. It had to be stripped down to the bare material and repainted," recalls Lady Doreen.
"The colour it is now is not the original colour. The artist specified that it had to be that horrible bright yellow and that’s what it should be, but it’s been painted a much paler yellow now.
"Our doctor’s is near John Moores University, where it is now, and whenever we go there we stop and say hello to Superlambanana and say ‘sorry you’re not the right colour’."
It hasn’t just been vandals who have seen the potential in redecorating the Superlambanana. It has been painted pink to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month, purple for the Smoke Free Liverpool campaign, and green for reasons nobody seems to remember.
For the Millennium, Sir Trevor added a bright red hat and bow tie so the sculpture could join in the celebrations and, one morning, commuters driving along The Strand were astonished to see it done up like a Friesian cow.
A secret group of pranksters had transformed the artwork in the middle of the night – one member calling the Daily Post later that day to warn that the Liver Birds could be next. Fortunately, however, they have so far managed to escape twilight redecoration.
This year, artists, school children and organisations are getting in on the act. One hundred smaller Superlambananas have been distributed as plain canvasses and there will be a parade of the finishing products in May.
Kevin Hunt, one of the artists waiting to hear if his submitted design will be accepted, was 15 when the sculpture came to Liverpool.
"I don’t remember it arriving. It feels like it’s always been here," says the 25-year-old, who grew up in Speke, not far from the former Bryant & May matchworks where the Superlambanana was built.
"It’s a strange monster really, that just landed and gets moved from place to place. I’m interested in the idea that some people can find something beautiful and others find it ugly.
"I think in Liverpool, and probably in England, people don’t appreciate things like public art when they’ve got them but as soon as there’s a suggestion they might be taken away then everybody gets annoyed."
Kevin’s artworks are usually based on the idea of taking an item that already exists, such as found objects or furniture, and changing something about it.
His Superlambanana design looks exactly like the original, except for one small addition.
"There would be a cast of a poo attached to the ground under its tail," he says.
"The original is a humorous slant on genetic modification and ironically it’s being cloned hundreds of times and spread about the city, so maybe it wouldn’t be so happy about that and it would mark its territory." Another design, this time by JMU graduate Jemma Egan, is called "Lamb Chops" and involves part of the sculpture being peeled away to reveal the organs inside. The 25-year-old has also submitted a design based on Liverpool City Council wheelie bins.
"I like the Superlambanana because public art is one of the only art situations that’s really for everyone. People might not choose to go into a gallery, but it’s on the street for everybody to see," says Jemma, who grew up in Widnes but has lived in Liverpool for the past seven years.
"I’m amazed how it has become such an iconic symbol of Liverpool, especially as it hasn’t been here for that long."
Indeed, who would have thought 10 years ago, when the Superlambanana was first unveiled to the public, that the people of Liverpool would have adopted it quite so readily?
Yet by 2004, when the organisers of Manchester’s Cow Parade wanted to rustle the sculpture to lead its carnival of animals, nobody wanted to see it go.
And though it is just a few weeks since the smaller versions have been placed on display across the city, they have already been taken to people’s hearts, some even being talked about as though they are real.
The Malmaison Hotel’s "Superstarrylambanana" has been painted black and had lots of tiny holes cut into it to show the light placed inside.
When I called the hotel to ask when I could take a photograph of it for this feature, I was told "Any time; Twinkle’s diary is completely free."
A vision for the future
THE Superlambanana was originally created for the Artranspennine 98 festival, the largest art exhibition ever to be staged in Britain, featuring projects at 30 different sites between Liverpool and Hull.
It was designed by Japanese artist Taro Chiezo, who based it on some smaller sculptures, which he had exhibited in a New York Gallery in 1994. Initially, the artwork was made as an ironic comment on genetic engineering, but it has also come to symbolise Liverpool’s maritime heritage – the wool leaving the port and the fruit coming in.
"It’s an image for the future.
"We are planning for the future and this is a fusion of two things," said the artist when it was unveiled in Liverpool in 1998.
The Superlambanana was constructed in the former Bryant & May matchworks, in Speke- Garston, by a team from Liverpool, before being transported to the Pier Head for a three-month stay.
Reaction was mixed, but the late poet Adrian Henri seemed to have it right when he said it should be welcomed "with an open mind and, if needs be, a sense of humour".
Miniature versions in a variety of colours and designs are now available to buy, and a version featuring artist Tony Brown’s famous image of the Liverpool Waterfront is due be launched this spring.
Source: Liverpool Daily Post
I still say get rid .Too stupid and ugly for me!!
You're right, it is World wide.. Here is one in Munich, Germany...
Last edited by naked lilac; 02-13-2008 at 07:26 PM.
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