Olympic arts

[Gob]

If madcap art was an Olympic sport, Britain would be there on the podium claiming gold, silver and bronze.

From carting a plane fuselage around Wales, to felling a forest for an immigrant-only football match, to sailing a chunk of Norway to the south coast of England; the nation’s artists have excelled themselves in their attempts to celebrate the London Games.

Mind you, they have had some help – £5.4million of taxpayers’ cash to be exact.



Cleared for take-off: Mark Rees's DC-9 fuselage will tour a number of Welsh towns. The artist says people will come to associate the memory of seeing the plane with the Olympics

The artists have been given up to £500,000 each by the Arts Council to mark the Olympics in their region. But their projects were yesterday dismissed as ‘fripperies’.

The idea for the football pitch was submitted by Craig Coulthard. Hundreds of trees will be chopped down in a commercial forest for a one-off amateur game.

Under the rules, players must have taken up British citizenship after 2000 or have indefinite leave to remain in the country.

German-born creator Mr Coulthard said: ‘The players will be among the most recent generation of new members of Scottish society and I want to celebrate their contribution to modern Scotland.’



It's a funny old game: A concept image of Craig Coulthard's idea, which will see hundreds of trees felled in a commercial forest to make room for a football pitch. The field will then host a one-off amateur game for immigrants

Welsh winner Mark Rees has spent his £500,000 on an abandoned fuselage of a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner, which he will take around the country on a trailer.

He said: ‘The day that this kind of extraordinary wingless creature comes into town and is nesting there for a period will stick in people’s memories so the Olympic Games will be the aeroplane.’

In the South West of England, six tons of land from an island in the Norwegian Arctic will be loaded on to a boat and hauled back to Britain. It will then be floated off the south coast as a ‘travelling embassy’. Artist and green campaigner Alex Hartley has christened his project Nowhereisland.

He said: ‘It makes you think about our identity as an island nation, what it is to compete for your country. I think Nowhereisland can act as a really powerful poetic metaphor for climate change without badgering and without compromising itself as a work of art.’



Moving mountains: Nowhereisland will see a six-ton piece of Norwegian land floated from Norway to Dorset. Artist Alex Hartley says it's a metaphor for climate change

The projects will be showcased this summer as part of the Cultural Olympiad, a programme of events to celebrate London 2012.

But they have been condemned by the TaxPayers’ Alliance as a waste of public money. Emma Boon said: ‘These pointless fripperies are adding to the total bill for the Olympics at a time when we can least afford it.’

Tory MP Geoffrey Cox QC added: ‘This is an inappropriate time for people to witness the expenditure of over half a million pounds on projects that may seem to those who are undergoing austerity a frivolous use of money.’

Other installations that have been given the go-ahead include the Lionheart Project which will feature the world’s largest crocheted lions.

London’s project asks the public to submit artistic messages to be played on small screens on the top of bus shelters across the capital. Among the images showcased on its website is a hypodermic needle in an arm. Arts Council England is funding nine of the 12 projects, while the regional equivalents will fund those in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The National Lottery has also donated.

A spokesman for Arts Council England said: ‘With some of the projects, the link to the Games is tangible and really obvious but every single one of them is inspired by the same principles as the Olympics themselves: trust, collaboration and friendship.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1pzoLdh8v

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[BoSoxGal]

Doesn't anyone just paint on canvas anymore?

[MajGenl.Meade]

There's an error. That's not the "art" plane in the photo. That is the scheduled Welsh Airways flight from Aberystwyth to Llandudno. The runways are too short at both places

Heaern Eryr!

Meade

[BoSoxGal]