HMS VICTORY RETURNS TO TRAFALGAR
Yinka Shonibare, MBE’s Fourth Plinth Ship To Set Sail in May
The next commission for the Fourth Plinth, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, by leading Anglo-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare will be unveiled in Trafalgar Square on the morning of Monday 24 May 2010.
Commissioned by the Mayor of London and supported by Arts Council England with sponsorship from Guaranty Trust Bank of Nigeria, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle is a scale replica of HMS Victory in a giant bottle.
The artwork will be the first commission on the Fourth Plinth to reflect specifically on the historical symbolism of Trafalgar Square, which commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, and will link directly with Nelson’s column. It is also the first commission by a black British artist.
The ship's 37 large sails will be made of richly patterned textiles commonly associated with African dress and symbolic of African identity and independence. The history of the fabric reveals that they were inspired by Indonesian batik design, mass produced by the Dutch and sold to the colonies in West Africa. Tying together historical and global threads, the work considers the legacy of British colonialism and its expansion in trade and Empire, made possible through the freedom of the seas that Nelson’s Victory provided.
Yinka Shonibare says his piece will reflect the story of multiculturalism in London:
"For me its a celebration of London’s immense ethnic wealth, giving expression to and honouring the many cultures and ethnicities that are still breathing precious wind into the sails of the United Kingdom. A ship in a bottle is an object of wonder. Adults and children are intrigued by its mystery. How can such towering masts and billowing sails fit inside such a commonplace object? With Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle I want to take this childhood sense of wonder and amplify it to match the monumental scale of Trafalgar Square."
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson's Ship in a Bottle is sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank who are also supporting Chris Ofili’s mid-career survey exhibition at Tate Britain, on view until 16 May 2010. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of Nigerian Independence. In London this will be marked by these two important exhibitions by leading international artists of Nigerian descent.
To look at previous exhibitions see Articles
Looking up… Yinka Shonibare, MBE.
NMNM, Villa Sauber, 17 avenue Princess Grace, MC98000 MONACO
June 8th, 2010 to January 16th, 2011.
The “Training for a Museum” exercise continues, with artists invited to take an alternative look at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco’s collections. In 2010, Yinka Shonibare, MBE, will inaugurate this exercise in reinterpretation at the Villa Sauber with a journey into the imaginary world of the stage.
In his work, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire), a Nigerian artist who lives in London and was born there in 1962, likes to unite different worlds in a single space, since he comes from the multiculturalism that constitutes our world today. His reflections on identity and memory mix together his two home cultures in a highly original aesthetic fashion. Bringing Dutch wax into a Victorian world and using it to dress the middle classes that he represents with headless mannequins proved to be an artistic gesture that made him instantly recognisable. A retrospective of Yinka Shonibare’s work has just been shown at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, followed by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and his ’ project will be inaugurated in Trafalgar Square on May 24, 2010.
Models, sculptures, photographs and videos: the works of Yinka Shonibare, MBE, will form an Ariadne’s thread inviting us to discover collections that belong to the artistic history of the Principality but have never or rarely been shown. Monte Carlo has been and is still a particularly vibrant artistic hub for stage and performance arts. We will encounter the Visconti “maquétothèque” of the Monte-Carlo Opera, Eugène Frey’s fabulous luminous decors, the Marquis du Périer de Mouriez’s strange collection of transparent paintings, plus the religious boxes from the Galéa Collection made by the Provencal Carmelites and a thousand other from the reserve collection that evoke the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries, the ancestors of European museums. A costume conservation workshop will run throughout the exhibition, providing an opportunity for the public to get to know the hidden aspects of a museum.