Game over Monopoly sculpture burned on bonfire
ASCULPTURE of a man carrying a Monopoly board put up in Stokes Croft by a mystery guerrilla sculptor has been dragged away and burned on a bonfire.
The street artist known only as Getting Up To Stuff erected the sculpture earlier this month at the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft headquarters in Jamaica Street, but it lasted less than a week.
The artist shared the fate of the sculpture, the latest they’ve done in a long line of mystery sculptures that have appeared in the city, on Sunday on their Instagram account.
With a caption reading: “Some you win, some you lose,” the picture showed the sculpture in pieces on the bonfire that is regularly lit on Turbo Island, the triangular space on the corner of Stokes Croft and Jamaica Street. Whoever was responsible had pulled the cement statue from its position on top of PRSC’s blanket store and dragged it along Jamaica
Street to put it on the weekend’s bonfire.
The work was at least the fourth sculpture from the artist to be installed in public places in Bristol in the past few years. Previously there has been a sculpture of an old woman with a hammer on Victoria Street, a person being comforted by a teddy bear for World Suicide Prevention Day on Jacob’s Wells Road, and a statue of ‘loo lady’ Victoria Hughes at her toilets on the Downs.
Also posting footage of the sculpture on Instagram, the artist wrote: “Monopoly: the game you win when everything is unaffordable.” People commended the “superb” piece in the comments, with many saying the location was fitting.
In its own comment, People’s Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC) said when the statue was put up: “What a thing to come in to this morning! Fits so well with the People’s Art Fair.”
The fair is part of its Stokes Croft Land Trust campaign to buy properties to retain them for community and cultural use into the future.
It seems that Getting up to Stuff had been working on the latest sculpture since at least February this year as, on the 12th of the month, the account shared a close-up video of some of the man’s (and dog’s) features.
When a fan asked what material they were made of, the artist replied: “They’re made of dreams and magic and cement.”