A submission from my friend Henry Carden, who kindly sent me a photo of what he described as “Massive Fish” in Ropner Park.
According to axisweb.org, the sculpture – named ‘Fish Swallowing Bird’ – “was designed to replace a Victorian drinking fountain (Dodshon’s Fountain), which had been temporarily sited in the park. Originally located in the town’s market square, the fountain had been moved due to the fact that fishmongers had used it to gut and clean fish in”. Ick.
The work is by artist Mick Thacker and was fabricated by Form Fabrications. It pays tribute to the piscine heritage of the location by showing a salmon with a negative-space heron in its gullet.
Thacker’s sculpture also draws inspiration from French sculptor Gaudier Brzeska’s ‘Bird Swallowing Fish’ (1914), which is shown in the second image (Google him by the way, he had a strange and eventful life).
North East Statues 