Celebrity heads on the wild side

The Daily Telegraph

Alexandria public artists and husband and wife team Gillie and Marc Schattner attended the hectic unveiling last Wednesday and said they were delighted with the reception at their Bankstown debut.

The excited reaction of shoppers to the red-carpet sculptures of celebrities sporting the heads of four-legged creatures tapped into a theme in their collection, The Celebrity Animal.

The sculptures include Arnold ‘Stag’ Schwarzenegger, Pamela ‘Poodle’ Anderson, Dr ‘Bear’ Evil, Michael ‘Dog’ Jackson and Jessica Rabbit.

“Everyone has a fascination with celebrity but it’s difficult to get close and engage them, so we came up with the hybrid idea so they could have that feeling of a little bit of fame,” Gillie said.

Marc said they were also parodying celebrity culture.

“Celebrities are the new royalty and shopping centres are the new galleries of the world,” he said.

The collection “asks to re-evaluate our relationships with celebrities and put them into context.”

The duo considered which animal would suit which star, for instance the head of a stag, as an alpha male leader of the herd, suited the musclebound body of Schwarzenegger.

The exhibition is on until April 30.