London arguably has the largest collection of useless lumps of bronze masquerading as art in the world – bronze is the dullest sculptural material and it takes exceptional talent to make good use of it. London’s bronze is all mostly forgettable – largely celebrating military murder, giving off the feeling of North Korea factory sculpture – propaganda for Empire and in the dullest way.
However there are a few exceptions, most of which though still public, are hidden away. The Dutch artist Henri Teixeira de Mattos’s strange wild animated work in London Zoo is one example. The other better known to the public is ‘Boadicea and Her Daughters’ by Thomas Thornycroft – which provocatively faces the Palace of Westminster threatening to burn it down and then take a sharp right up the Mall. Large contemporary public sculpture in London of late is a big fail and it has taken much smaller works – ones that can be held in the hand, like take away fast food – by the artist Alexander de Cadenet at the Andipa Gallery in London SW3 to show us the modern monumental.
Alexander de Cadenet’s ‘World Domination Burgers’ a collection of five sculptures – merges familiar classical ‘heroic’ forms with contemporary symbols of excess, power, disposability and extinction. He creates a reinterpretation of London’s equestrian sculptural monuments which have been largely the reserve of monarchs and military generals. Here his figures ride fast food, a Big Mac, a wooly rhino, stuffed with a filling of private jets, luxury cars and Rolex watches – the figures of Trump and Putin pair up – like two Knights Templar. The bronze materiel is given a dipped coating of gold in a promise of fiscal solidity that will not hold up – yet this work needs no promise of elevation or scaling up for public consumption in a public space as it already exists invading our private one – and yet I could not help imagining them writ large atop London’s Admiralty Arch or on a plinth in a London park.
Words Martin Sexton
Alexander de Cadenet World Domination Burger Series, Andipa London @alexanderdecadenet
