Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Whazzat?

The existence of this monstrosity first came to my attention through the good offices of Tim Blair, who describes it, accurately, as a "mega-breasted flying turtle whale".

Is it intended to represent anything else besides a typical taxpayer-funded sinkhole, created through the corrosive process of mixing public funds with artists on the make?

10 comments:

bruce said...

The mind just boggles!
I have no idea what it is supposed to represent.

JeffS said...

Suggested title: "The Flying Artist Feeding Trough, As Paid for By Taxpayers."

RebeccaH said...

How many women bolted and horses fainted at the sight of that monstrosity?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 1 said:

Look! In the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Titty Turtle come to save the day!

mojo said...

"MA! Git mah shotgun!"

Col. Milquetoast said...

So, the symbol of Canberra is a bunch of giant, useless tits. I bet most people grasp that intuitively.

Personally, I like it. (but then I like this too.) Mind you, I wouldn't pay $170,000 (or $334,000 or whatever the real costs are) for it and I don't a government should either.

Robert of Ottawa said...

Go over to C-SPAN.org and see Jay Carney today at the "presidential" press conference. This man is the Fred Astair of Spin.

What a dumb move of the DOJ to go after Associated Press, it appears to have alienated the Press.

Carney is speaking sentances longer than the white line down the middle of the road, without actually saying enything but: "we don't know anything about anything and we are awaiting the results of independent investigations". The amazing contortions of grammatical structure and memory of where the sentance started is quite impressive.

TimT said...

Colonel Milq, I both agree and disagree with you! I quite like the Sky Whale - it's well made and imaginative in a science-fictiony/kitsch way - but hated the big rubber duckie.

The problem though is a government which spends up big on the arts, to the extent that government money becomes one of the major funding sources for artists - because then you'll get both incredibly talented artists (like Piccinnini) and time-wasters who are able to game the system and appeal to arts bureaucrats competing for money: in the end, it's not a system that will reliably encourage and fund good art.

TimT said...

Fun link related to this story.

Minicapt said...

Gentlemen, we now plan to introduce the "Washington Whale"; twice the size of the "Canberra Carp", and with four times as many appendages. Our Federal employees must be represented by the best!

Cheers