KEY POINTS:
A life-size 50kg solid gold statue of supermodel Kate Moss, with her legs tucked behind her head, has been unveiled.
The £1.5m (NZ$4m) sculpture of the 34-year-old model made its debut yesterday at the British Museum, in London.
The work, entitled Siren, and described as an "Aphrodite of our times", was created by contemporary British sculptor Marc Quinn.
Quinn's statue was unveiled as part of Statuephilia, a British Museum exhibition of contemporary art. The metallic Moss is thought to be the largest gold statue since the time of ancient Egypt.
The statue, insured for £10m (NZ$26.8), was created by Quinn as part of a series featuring the model. His 2006 sculpture, Sphinx, featured Moss in another yoga position. Siren will be on display to the public at the museum until January.
Quinn, who hopes to show the image across the world, suggested she had an abstract appeal for artists. "This sculpture is about the abstractions that rule our lives, the desire for money, immortality, for beauty. Kate Moss is a cultural hallucination we have all agreed to create.
"She is the only person who has the ubiquity and silence that is required in an image of divinity, that has been created through time, so that we can project onto it," he said.
James Fox, co-curator of the display at the British Museum, agreed artists had become fascinated by the zeitgeist spirit she represents.
"It's not about Kate Moss in its accuracy to her character. It's using her likeness that has become so iconic to explore broader themes, to make a familiar face unfamiliar," he said.
"What Quinn might be doing here is creating her in a cult-like form, in a solid-gold state, as a comment on celebrity culture and how it has mythologised Moss like a goddess, feverishly," he said.
- INDEPENDENT
