Beats from the Jungle Drums

Exciting times!
I woke up this morning and checked the Jungle City website to see if my Orangutan Welcome to Jungle City Edinburgh had been moved from the Botanics to it's new home in the city. Expecting that they were being moved as predicted on the 6^th and having heard the day before that many of the sculptures were packing up and being relocated I was eager to reveal where he was now located.

I knew he had been getting a good response from the photographs that were appearing around the interwebs, as well as reports coming in from friends who went up for the Fringe. From what else I've seen, the project in general has been garnering a really good response. The Botanics apparently seeing a 77% increase in visitors from this time last year. Impressive considering the weather.

Well I do wish I was up there as his new location is confusing me a little. According to the map (which can be downloaded here) Welcome to Jungle City Edinburgh is no. 64 and is located at The Meadows which is a park to the south of the City Centre. However no.64 on the visual map seems to be located somewhere on George Street near the Assembly Rooms right in the shopping centre of Edinburgh. When I know where he actually is I will be tweeting about it, so if you don't already follow me on Twitter (or Facebook if you prefer) you should. ;)

Now my Orang has moved I can reveal a few more details. He has been sponsored by Eco Movers/Matt Purdie and Sons and apparently is on the Audio Guide! So if you have an iphone you can download this app which will lead you on a tour of the 50 or so animals out of the 130 that celebrities have leant their voices to. I don't have an iphone so I've yet to hear it.

Finally if he is on George Street he is really near to Harvey Nichols, which is where you can go to find the Jungle City pop up shop. If you want a mini version of the sculptures you can order one from there as well as The Art Book with a front cover with the lovely Loz Atkinson's hornbill One for the Rock, One for the Crow, One to Die, One to Grow on it (I thought mine was a long title). Mine is on page 67. The Art Book, T-Shirts and some plain coloured mini sculptures are currently available on their online shop.

Finally you should check out the Jungle City website, it's had a redesign with all this new information including pages for all their artists.

Welcome to Jungle City Edinburgh 2011

Update on the Orang-utan

As I said, I have been asked to paint an Orang-utan for The Elephant Family's Jungle City Edinburgh and my design, much like last years Elephant, includes both a sunny, blue-skied side and a threatening, stormy side. Any of you who know anything about my artwork will know that I am obsessed with the postcard and the tourist image, more specifically taking touristic images and removing the usual blue sky and replacing it with something more threatening and unusual to the stereotypical notion of the postcard. These themes influenced my elephant and influence my Orang-utan by making them two sided and using the different skies.

Reverse: Stormy Sky, beginnings of greenery and Hornbill

Front: Blue sky, hands and some greenery

Last years elephant was very easy to make two sided, he had almost identical sides with just a few changes. This year I didn't want to do that exact concept again and the Orang-utan is not by nature an easy animal to make two sides of. He is very much a front important animal and the concept had to recognise that. I also wanted to make a point of him being in Edinburgh.

Front: Greenery continued, Edinburgh Castle and Nelsons Monument

So I decided to have one side include a conglomeration of Edinburgh sights. I was tempted to recreate an iconic Edinburgh scene like you might see on a postcard of that place, however having never gone there I was lacking quite a bit of context that I would normally prefer to have before picking and recreating an image. After looking at Edinburgh tourist websites I settled on three possibilities, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and Nelsons Monument.

Reverse: Jungle scene including Tiger and Elephant

I decided to have the other side be a general jungle/densely wooded scene and incorporate all the animals in Jungle City, just as I did for the elephant. I decided that the stormy sky would be best on the jungle scene for two reasons.

1. While the Jungle frequently has storms and sudden downpours, by having the threatening sky over the animals it does highlight, hopefully that there are other things that threaten them, namely human changes to their habitat, something that is important to the cause.
2. Scotland, and so it's capital, has the stereotype that it is always raining. It seemed to make sense to put the blue sky here for no other more reason than to break stereotypes. Something I very much like doing.

Front: Greenery close to completion.

Reverse: Greenery completed, crocodile can be seen, flowers started.

Finally I decided to have the jungle scene on his back because he is such a front facing animal. For people seeing him in the streets of Edinburgh the first thing they might think about is that fact there are all these animals in Edinburgh and isn't it grand. The sights of Edinburgh being on his front reinforce this feeling but if you make the effort to look all around him you will find another deeper message. It highlights that the plight of the animals they are seeing around Edinburgh in sculptural form and in their native habitat can easily be forgotten or hidden from view. Hopefully the spectacular lightning strewn sky and slight encroachment by one or two of the animals from the back side onto the front side will encourage people to look all around him.

Jungle City Edinburgh 2011

Finally I get to tell you all about this!

A few months ago I was approached by the Elephant Family, with whom, if you recall, I painted a life-size adolescent fibreglass elephant for last summers Elephant Parade in London. This time they had grand plans to turn fringe season Edinburgh into a jungle with many animals rather than just elephants.

As you may know the Elephant Family is a charity devoted to the protection and conservation of the asian elephant in the wild. The London Elephant Parade aimed to raise 2 million pounds to go towards securing corridors of land connecting current elephant habitats. In the end it managed to raise over 4 million pounds, a resounding success and a real boon towards protecting the elephant.

Jungle City Edinburgh recognises that there are many other endangered species that share the elephants habitat and that by protecting the habitat for the elephants they are also protecting it for all the other species that live there. As such, Edinburgh in August and September will abound with over 150 life-size sculptures of Elephants, Rhinoceros Horn-bills, Tigers, Crocodiles and Orang-utans.

Edinburgh will be a Jungle! More information here: http://www.jungle-city.org/index.html

Well I have been asked to paint an Orang-utan and more will be revealed on that later. Meanwhile if you have Flickr, Twitter or Facebook you can now follow his progress. I am posting photos online, 1 maybe 2 a day as he progresses. They are going up on Flickr but I tend to link to them online in other places too.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/noblueskies/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/noblueskies

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gemma-Cumming/14653030250

The blank canvas