Sausmarez Manor gets Elephantman statues
ELEPHANTMAN has made his mark in Guernsey again with two statues in Sausmarez Manor’s Artpark to raise awareness of his campaign for animal rights and the ivory trade.
Artist Dominic Snow, who campaigns under the name Elephantman, fell foul of the authorities two years ago having placed concrete statues around the island, including at Albecq, which were removed because of health and safety concerns.
He recently appealed for islanders to come forward with new locations for his work.
‘Many more elephants and plaques are planned,’ he said.
‘I have moved to a different part of London so there will be more appearing in South-East London soon.’
He also has contacts in Paris, Barcelona and Los Angeles, where he hopes elephant statues will soon appear too.
The two elephant statues are among 200 figures in the artpark at Sausmarez Manor.
The manor’s Peter de Sausmarez said: ‘I am very pro saving nature and am all for any kind of conservation, so I am very pleased with the statues in the park.
‘To kill six tonnes of elephant for a couple of tusks is rather grotesque,’ he added.
As well as statues, Elephantman plans to develop a talk to take around schools and to give each school an elephant.
‘The message is the main thing. We have in our hands the habitable future of our planet and I want to get across to young people what they as individuals can do about it.
‘The children are the future and I am working with a primary school teacher to put a programme together which works with one or more aspects of the curriculum.’
In a previous article about Elephantman’s quest to spread awareness about animal rights and the ivory trade, he appealed for islanders to contact him if they had a location in which an elephant statue could stand.
He specified: ‘The locations need to be visible to passers-by and be relatively high up so that they can’t be easily tampered with.
‘The place the elephant sits on must be as flat and level as possible and it is helpful if there is a vertical flat space below where a plaque can be fixed.’
Although he did get a response from someone with a garden location, the artist was concerned it would look too much like a garden ornament, ‘which in itself is a fine thing, but not the guerilla protest art which my elephants are meant to be’.
He added: ‘If a statue was on top of a wall looking out at people then it looks less like an ornament. If you were getting a sculpture for your garden, you wouldn’t place it like that.’
Without people purchasing statues or prints of the elephants, Mr Snow cannot continue to spread his message in this way – thousands of pounds per year are spent on the creation and installation of his work.
n For more information, visit www.wearepeople.org.uk or contact Elephantman on toppancake@hotmail.com where he will happily accept location suggestions for more elephant statues.
Sausmarez Manor is having a clear-out of Continental sculptures that islanders can purchase at the end of September.
For more information call 235571.
