Thursday, August 15, 2013

Standing room only

Not to be taking a position as leading authorities on living statues, but who’d have thought so soon after uncovering the living sculpture motherlode that we'd be witnessing a living sculptor smack-down in New Zealand? 

It all starts with rugby-themed living statue Creaghie Beere checking out Highly Flammable (it gets better) on Facebook and finding they're booked to do a ‘fire and ice’ themed event for the Bledisloe Cup (told you). Naturally they leaned toward living sculptures as one does in the Fire and Ice business and intimated as much on FB. Beere told the Dominion Post that this was clearly “stepping on an unwritten rule of street performing” (no, not pinching the money while the statue is looking straight ahead but copying another performer’s work). 

Logan Elliott of HF responded that acts like rugby living sculptures “had been staged all around the world for the past 50 years” and this is probably true. We found an example used to open a store in Florence last year. And, as the old saying goes, ‘if they’re doing rugby living statue work in Florence they’re bound to be doing it somewhere else’.

Images: from the left to right, Creaghie Beere in LS mode (Photo: CHRIS HILLOCK/Fairfax NZ), the Florence footy figure and a random football player living statue of whom there are many.