Gulliver Travels again - sand sculpture

I have made other sculptures about Dean Swift and his excellent book Gulivers travels. It is strange that I always seem to be coming back to it and that each time it is with a feeling that the book should be required reading for anyone trying to navigate the madness of the 21st century. For me, it is up there with 1984 and A Brave New World as a documentary of the last decade or so.

The discourse around politics on the other side of the pond is like something right out of Gulliver. The Big Endians and the Little Endians fight over which side of the egg to break while missing the bigger picture that whichever side they take they will still end up with egg on their face. We live in a time when if people were to just step back and look at themselves from the outside they would see how idiotic the things they get worked up about really are and realise that the egg itself has gone bad.

Take 1

I made my first Gulliver sculpture in 2007 in Dublin Castle where we had a theme of Irish writers and I got to experiment with forced perspective and it focused on the premise that Swift himself was the subject of his own book.

You can read more about that piece Here

Take 2

The second I did a year later as part of book month in a great location in the centre of Dublin. Inside an archway at the CHQ building. This was a great technical challenge for me right in the heart of where the banks were collapsing left and right of me.

You can read more about that piece Here

Take 3

This time I was in Duncannon Ireland and they requested a theme of books again and I was given Gulliver.

It wasn't as big of a challenge this time nor was it a piece I feel too proud of. That was due to only having three days and also having a major collapse.

Everything started very well and I was pleased with how things were going. I had a nice portrait of Johnaton Swift made, one of my better portraits as far as I remember and we decided to break for lunch. I returned after having a nice seafood chowder in the Strand Bar only to find that the whole face had crumbled to the ground and I had to start again. You will have to take my word for this because I have no pictures of the face before. Maybe one does exist and I will add it to the post later if I find one.

What you see here is the best I could do with the sand I had left. I pushed the face deeper into the sand bank and made it as safe as I could not wanting to have a repeat accident. It was very flat and unflattering to the great writer.

For Gulliver himself, I used some more forced perspective mischief. I finished the whole composition with a little landscape the illustrate the scale of things. The string holding Gulliver down was a fun little addition.

Cut and print

As projects go it was not very memorable. Time was against us and we just knuckled down to work without much time for shenanigans.

So, that was that. If you have not read Gulliver I suggest you do but if you are from the new generation maybe check out the movie starring Ted Danson for a TL:DR.

Ps

Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.