Wallop!

Join the Elephant Parade

31 May 2010

The elephant Parade 2010 is bringing art to the masses, and I for one, think it’s just flipping wonderful.

Brought to you by www.elephantfamily.org this event sees over 250 brightly painted life-size elephants located around London, to shine a spotlight on the urgent crisis faced by the endangered Asian elephant. Each decorated by a different artist, the elephants brighten  every park, street corner and building they grace.

This is London’s biggest outdoor art event on record with an estimated audience of 25 million and 5 of those 25 million were me and my family out for a day’s elephant hunting today.

We managed to clock up a score of 21 elephants, and had a lot of fun doing so, but realised in the process the scale of this event. We had come prepared, with plenty of chocolate for energy and, cheating slightly, a map of where all the elephants can be found but we only managed a mere snippet of what is available and will have to return for phase 2 of the hunt. Luckily, the elephants remain in London until July and so there remains plenty of time to do so, and I would urge anyone else to do the same before they disappear and are auctioned off to their new homes.

We loved so many of the elephants, but particularly enjoyed coming upon them unexpectedly such as ‘The New Map of London’ by Nongklan Ponningmas, which sits splendidly in front of the vibrant red front of More London Place.

My personal favourite, however, is a beautiful peacock feathered work placed on the north bank of London Bridge, just round the corner from the Monument to the Great Fire of London. Entitled Mayur Gajendra by Nilesh Mistry, it really is something special brightening up a very grey area of London.