As many of you may already know, the summer of 2012 saw Northampton town centre’s streets, shops and open spaces lit up by a colourful parade of safari animals. Giraffes, hippos, gorillas, lions, elephants and rhinos paraded through the town for 10 weeks from June to August. I had the honour of both creating one of the sculptures – uTroop, an interactive gorilla sculpture that takes portraits of the people he meets – and photographing the official portraits of the sculptures for Wild In Art to use in marketing/promotion and on their website.
Now the event has come to a close and you now have a chance to own one of the fabulous Go Safari animals!
Next week the Go Safari sculptures will be sold in an online auction, with 75% of the net proceeds going to some very important charities; the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance, Macmillan Haematology Suite Appeal at Northampton General Hospital and the Born Free Foundation. The auction has a style of artwork to suit everyone, from the futuristic A.P.E. to the classically painted Lofty, a giraffe who spent the summer on Sheep Street. If you’re missing the excitement and glory of the Olympics, bid on Go Team GB to own a permanent reminder of Team GB’s incredible summer of success. Feeling nostalgic? Taxi for Adam is a stunning piece of He-man fan art that will be an amazing centrepiece in any garden, office or home. Northampton Town Centre BID played a pivotal role as Presenting Partner on Go Safari Northampton. 75% of the proceeds from the sale of one of their sponsored sculptures, Graffy will be donated to Northampton based young person’s charity, the Lowdown. Tracy Grunwell, from WNAA can’t wait to see who buys Agusta, the Air Ambulance pilot gorilla;
“It’s fantastic to see the response we have had from Agusta, getting involved with Wild in Art has been truly amazing. I hope Agusta raises such a lot of money for this incredibly worthy cause. The air ambulance is a vital service in this area as we receive no funding, the auction will make a huge difference, not just to us but to the lives of the people we save.”
Macmillan’s Bernadette Halton will miss Trunkletoes the elephant when she goes to her new permanent home but says
“the money raised will go a long way to help the campaign.”
Anne Tudor from the Born Free Foundation was delighted with the funds raised from the Pride of Northampton auction and has high hopes for Go Safari;
“It has been great to be back ‘on safari’ in Northampton. I hope through the auction the sculptures will find new loving homes and we will put the funds raised to good use looking after them in the wild!”
Charlie Langhorne, Director, Wild in Art’s commented on the company’s first ever online auction;
“The Go Safari animals have been a fabulous attraction in Northampton throughout what has been a really exciting summer. We have decided to host our first on-line auction to give everyone a chance to own one of Wild in Art’s famous sculptures. It’s been a memorable time, why not invest in a piece of art which will always bring a smile to your face as we remember the summer of 2012 whilst support some very important charity campaigns”
Challenging Photography!
Photographing the sculptures presented some pretty big challenges for me, not lease that the giraffes are a little bigger than my normal models – they’re 11 feet tall! The other animals are not small either and take two people to move them. Add to this that the shoot took place in a rather dirty old mechanic’s workshop stuffed to the gunnels with numerous other life-sized, or bigger, safari animals being prepared for display and the small window the provided an inconvenient shaft of direct sunlight was only a small problem… Despite the practical issues, the shots were all done in one afternoon before being passed to the Go Safari team for incorporation into their website etc. Some of the photos are shown on this page, but for the full set, please visit http://www.gosafarinorthampton.co.uk/sculpture-gallery/
The auction will be live from Wednesday 19th September for 10 days: http://auctions.wildinart.co.uk
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