Amanda Parer's Fantastic Planet installation will be in Auckland next week. Photo / Supplied
Amanda Parer's Fantastic Planet installation will be in Auckland next week. Photo / Supplied
Giant, otherworldly figures will be popping up around Auckland this week.
Australian visual artist Amanda Parer's Fantastic Planet installation features inflatable illuminated "humanoids".
It's one of the few events still happening as part of the Auckland Arts Festival which was forced to cancel 51 live events across Tāmaki Makaurau because of the Omicron outbreak.
The giant humanoids appear on roofs and on the ground. Pictured at the Brisbane Festival. Photo / Supplied
Parer took inspiration from the 1973 Czech/French film Fantastic Planet, which was set in a distant future in a world inhabited by giants and where human beings are a feral race.
From March 10 to 27, they will sit on top of buildings, peer around corners or lay on the ground where punters can interact with them.
The Glow Eindhoven festival, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Photo / Supplied
Maroochy Music and Visual Arts Festival, Maroochydore, Queensland. Photo / Supplied
The exhibition, which has travelled around the world, aims to demonstrate that humans threaten their own existence by using up the world's resources.
"Scale is a very important factor in this work in that the artist is allowing the audience to hopefully experience a moment of humility and reflection amongst these large but peaceful giants, a sense that we as a species rarely get to feel," Parer says.
It's a view she shares with naturalist and television presenter David Attenborough, who has said: "We are a plague on the Earth. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our growth or the natural world will do it for us."
