MONOLITHOMANIA!
Mysterious monoliths and obelisks are all the rage in Wales
Following the mysterious appearance of a 10ft
(3m) tall shining steel obelisk in a remote location in a Utah canyon in 2020, found by ranchers carrying out an aerial count of the region’s bighorn sheep, the world seemed briefly seized by monolithomania.
First another appeared in California, and then others started turning up internationally, in Romania, Ukraine and the UK
(FT401:4+14, 402:24, 406:26). This sparked fevered speculation about their potential alien origin, inspired by memories of the black alien structures in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. One, on Glastonbury Tor, had “not Banksy” etched on it, giving a nod to another equally mysterious artist. Others in the UK popped up on Dartmoor, in the centre of the Merry Maidens stone circle in
“When I first saw it, I was a bit taken aback as it looked like a UFO”
Cornwall and on the beach in Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight. They usually vanished as abruptly as they had appeared a few days after being found, having created a media stir.
Then, just as they were starting to be thought of as a 21st century equivalent of crop circles, they stopped. A New Mexico-based artist group known as The Most Famous Artist eventually owned up to creating and placing the US monoliths. The one that appeared in Turkey turned out to be the work of the government to promote a space launch announcement, and designer Tom Dunford took credit for the Isle of Wight structure. The origin of the rest, though, remains shrouded in mystery.
Now, it seems they have returned, with a new, three-sided, Toblerone-shaped structure made of shining steel showing up on Hay Bluff near Hay on Wye in Powys, Wales. It was first
spotted by local runner Richard Haynes, who said, “I thought it looked a bit bizarre and might be a scientific media research thing collecting rainwater, but then realised it was way too tall and strange for that.” He added, “I went up to it and it was about 10-foot [3m] tall at least and triangular, definitely stainless steel,” adding, “It was hollow, and I imagine pretty light. Light enough for two people to carry it up and plant it in the ground.” As someone who runs the route frequently, Haynes said he had never seen the monolith before and that a friend who passed the spot two weeks before had said it definitely wasn’t there then. “I did notice on Google that it’s popped up fairly recently and from what I can gather it disappears after a couple of days,” he said.
Craig Muir, a local builder, unexpectedly encountered the thing on the morning of 12 March and shot a video for TikTok. “When I first saw it, I was a bit taken aback as it looked like some sort of a UFO,” he said. “It seemed like a very fine metallic [material]. The steel structure was almost 10 feet long and looked perfectly levelled and steady, despite the weather being windy.” Muir was certain that the obelisk had been deliberately placed on the hillside. “It didn’t seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground,” he said. “However, there were no obvious tracks around it, and one would think that there would be a lot of mess around it, but there wasn’t.” He speculated it might have been lowered from a helicopter. “It must be some sort of art installation… If you didn’t know anything, to look at it, you could have easily thought it had been dropped off by a UFO or something.”
Tom Dunford denies responsibility for the Hay monolith, but there is some suspicion locally that Muir, who is familiar with metal fabrication, might have made the thing himself. He rebuts this, saying, “I’m not claiming to have made it, I just happened to find it as I go up there every day, sometime twice, as a form of exercise and to walk the dogs. I think whoever did it was quite skilled. If I had to guess I would say it would cost between 100 and 200 quid as it’s no more than one large sheet of steel.” Muir adds: “I’d say it was like a surgical steel because obviously whoever’s done it doesn’t want it to rust.” He says it cannot be aluminium because, “it had too much shine to it, it was very, very smooth, very shiny, very crisp edges.” In a later video posted on social media Muir said people were asking him why he didn’t touch the monolith.
He then cheekily goes up and touches it, editing the video to make it seem as if he disappears on contact.
Interestingly, the monolith appeared at the same time as Welsh band Samana – Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett – released their album Ascension in a deluxe edition that comes with a limited-edition map guiding listeners to a secret Welsh location where they have built the obelisk pictured on the album’s cover. This, though, is a metre high, made of limestone and emblazoned with an ancient Sanskrit symbol, not three metres tall and made of stainless steel. The band claim to have transported and erected the monument themselves, saying: “It took one day and one night of battling with the elements to erect.”
Explaining why they did this, Harris and Mockett say: “Beyond the ideas explored in the album musically, we wanted to create tangible dimensions in which to bridge the gap between music and fine art, in an attempt to create an all-encompassing world that creates an entirely idiosyncratic experience. The map is but a passage to this world.” walesonline.com, 11 Mar; telegraph.co.uk, boingboing.net, wjw.com, BBC News, 13 Mar; news. artnet.com 14 Mar 2024.