Art up the Feeder
In recent years, Bristol has hosted two very successful public arts trails.
Wow! Gorillas was a project sponsored by Bristol Zoo Gardens in 2011 that displayed 61 decorated life-sized fibreglass gorilla sculptures on the city’s streets. It coincided with the zoo’s 175th anniversary. At the end of the event the sculptures were auctioned off, raising £427,300 for gorilla conservation work and for local Bristol charity Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Appeal.
2013 saw Gromit Unleashed take to the streets of Bristol. This saw 1.18 million people visiting the Gromit Unleashed trail and associated exhibition over the 10 weeks of the event last summer. Church Road at Lawrence Hill was one of the sites chosen for a Gromit; it hosted one named Lodekka (posts passim) after the fondly remembered Bristol double-decker bus commonly in use when I first moved to the city in the 1970s.
After these events, the places where any remaining sculptures can be seen on public display can be counted on the fingers of one hand. One gorilla can be seen in North Street, Bedminster and one Gromit adorns the bows of one of the Bristol Ferry Boat Co.’s ferries plying the city docks.
However, there’s one place where both a gorilla and a Gromit can be seen together – Feeder Road alongside the Feeder Canal, historically an area associated with grime and industry, not art of public view.
If you look up a couple of hundred yards beyond the traffic lights, you see them.
Both were bought at the respective charity auctions by Manor Scrap. According to their website, Manor also acquired another gorilla, but this cannot be viewed from the road from what I could see.
Chatting to Pete, the boss of Manor Scrap recently, I understand that the next sculpture trail to be organised in the city will be based on another Aardman animated character – Sean the Sheep.
Will Shawn end up down the Feeder too?
According to yesterday’s online edition of the Bristol Post, the Department of Transport is to invest the princely sum of £168 – the largest amount it has spent on tarmac for four decades – in England’s road network.
