''Alien'' is a 2012 sculpture by the British artist
David Breuer-Weil
David Breuer-Weil (born 1965) is an artist from London whose work is exhibited worldwide. He works in different media including large canvases and monumental bronze sculptures.
Biography
David Breuer-Weil studied at Central Saint Martins, Centra ...
. It depicts a giant humanoid figure five times as large as a person, embedded head-first in grass. The sculpture was first installed in
Grosvenor Gardens
Grosvenor Gardens is the name given to two triangular parks in Belgravia, London, faced on their western and eastern sides by streets of the same name. Both roads run roughly north to south from Hobart Place and Grosvenor Place to Buckingham ...
in the
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a London borough with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in Greater London, England. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It contains a large par ...
in April 2013, as part of the City of Sculpture initiative.
In September 2015 it was moved to the National Trust property of
Mottisfont
Mottisfont is a village and civil parish in the Test Valley district of Hampshire, England, around northwest of Romsey. The village is the location of Mottisfont Abbey. Much of the surrounding land, which is part of the Mottisfont Estate, and s ...
in Hampshire.
The work is executed in glass reinforced plastic with a bronze powder coat. It was scaled up from a much smaller
maquette
A ''maquette'' is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture or work of architecture. The term is a loanword from French. An equivalent term is ''bozzetto'', a diminutive of the Italian word for a sketch.
Sculpture
A maquette ...
and incorporates hugely enlarged versions of the artist's fingerprints as well as his own graffiti. It was inspired in part by Breuer-Weil's grandfather Ernst, who fled to England after the
Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 but subsequently found himself labelled an "
enemy alien
In customary international law, an enemy alien is any alien native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secur ...
". In acknowledgement of the link, the name "Ernst" is written in large letters on the surface of the sculpture. The sculpture also incorporates a portrait of the fictional Kaiser of Nerac, a character who rules an imaginary world conceived of by Breuer-Weil as a source of inspiration for his artworks.
[
According to Breuer-Weil, ''Alien'' is intended to evoke "the shock of an alien landing in the heart of London and taking everybody by surprise"; he comments that "every new work of art should be like an alien landing, something sudden and unexpected."][Alien in Grosvenor Gardens.]
David Breuer-Weil. Retrieved 20 March 2015. The sculpture is meant to be more about "our sense of belonging than any sci-fi theme",[ but Breuer-Weil suggests that "extra-terrestrials are completely human, maybe just different in scale, as is the case with my sculpture, which is five times the size of an ordinary person, but very human otherwise."]
Westminster City Council, 12 November 2013 It was then moved to the grounds of Mottisfont in Hampshire, where it was unveiled on 7 September 2015.
References
External links
Alien lands in Grosvenor Gardens
{{Authority control
2012 establishments in England
2012 sculptures
Bronze sculptures in England
Extraterrestrial life in popular culture
Outdoor sculptures in London
Statues in London
Works by British people
Outdoor sculptures in England