Superlambanana: A firm favourite

Jun 13 2008 by Phil Redmond, Liverpool Daily Post

SUPERLAMBANANA. If art is meant to stimulate a reaction, then there can be no doubt that the half-fruit half-animal creation of artist Taro Chiezo has certainly ticked that box.

Typically, though, probably not in ways envisaged when the original work was commissioned as part of the early Biennial. While always considered a temporary installation, I doubt the intention was for a perambulatory creature of derision, which it became after people scoffed and mocked, defaced and defiled until receiving cultural sanctuary under the watchful eyes of Sir Trevor and Lady Doreen Jones.

They placed the much lamented creature under their protection outside their ship’s chandlery business JP Lamb, having the obvious connection to “lamb”. Perhaps they also saw the link to the Superlambanana (SLB) being a depiction of both the port’s past in importing and exporting fruit, meat and cotton, as well as our shared future of genetically modified food? They did though, I am told, keep a tin of paint to hand to touch up whatever embarrassment the latest stag and hen night brigades visited on their adopted charge.

It then became almost a metaphor for the city itself when the Joneses shut up shop and the SLB needed a new home. With the departure of private enterprise, the public sector stepped in, when John Moores University offered a final resting place of outside the Learning Resource Centre, in Tithebarn Street. And final resting place it might well be as, despite the surgical interventions of those who have tended and patched up SLB in the past, the feeling is that if it moves again it will only be as a pile of rubble.

The metaphor then continues as 2008 approaches, expectations rise and so do property prices. Throw in the furore around the Gormleys, and suddenly another urban myth is born. A worthless symbol of derision is transformed into an asset with the ultimate threat of our newly- established icon being snatched by Madchester. Obviously, it’s all enough to get the lawyers and advisors scrambling around dusting off old boxes and old files, hoping to discover a lottery ticket in who said what to who and when.

No matter how that gets resolved, this weekend will see the Go Superlambananas project launched, and over a hundred SLBs of different designs will start to populate the city for the summer, after which they will be auctioned for charity. If you can support this in any way, please do as there is no doubt that Chiezo’s one-time figure of fun is now a firm favourite, especially with children.

However, despite all that, SLB is not the Gormleys, nor a Liver Bird, and after the weekend there will be scores more. So, if someone from Madchester does want to cough up for that patched up version – Go Superlambanana.