More Banana Art

In 2004, London refused to allow artist Doug Fishbone to install an artwork consisting of 10,000 bananas at a site in the City’s then-fashionable Spitalfield district.  Fishbone had in August 1999 had a triumph with a similar display in Ecuador.    Here‘s a pic of his March 2005 installation in his native Brooklyn, consisting of 20,000 bananas piled up in the middle of the street.

Fishbone

Fishbone

Michael Fernandes, Banana Artist

I should have mentioned this in my notes on the latest issue of Funny Times, since I learned about it there.  Anyway, here’s the report from Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird:

Great Art!

Artist Michael Fernandes’ exhibit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June caused a commotion because it was merely a banana on a gallery’s window sill, and Fernandes had it priced at $2,500 (Cdn) (down from his original thought, $15,000). Actually, Fernandes changed bananas every day (eating the old one), placing progressively greener ones out to demonstrate the banana’s transitoriness. “We (humans) are also temporal, but we live as if we are not,” he wrote. Despite the steep price, two collectors placed holds on the “work,” requiring the gallery’s co-owner, Victoria Page, to get assurance from callers. “It’s a banana; you understand that it’s a banana?” [Globe and Mail (Toronto), 7-2-08]

The installation was the target of a crime when a “prankster” broke into the gallery and replaced the banana with an apple and a handwritten note.  Here‘s the gallery’s site devoted to the exhibition.  In 1992, Fernandes gave this interview and published it in a book of his.

Banana Chorus

Via www.weirdomatic.com, some banana art.

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