Sunday, March 06, 2016

Picture Puzzle: Paddle this canoe?

Ok, you interweb search wizards, hear's a little picture puzzle for you.

  1. Why is this canoe (kayak really) hanging from the ceiling?
  2. Whereabouts in London can it be found?
  3. What happened here in 2012?
  4. Which rivers has it paddled down?
  5. What's it all about?

8 comments:

Tillerman said...

1. Because it would look silly on the floor.
2. Hanging from the ceiling.
3. The Olympics.
4. Thames. Fleet. Lea. Westbourne. Tyburn. Walbrook. Effra. Rhine. Danube. Seine. Elbe. Loire. Volga.
5. Messing about in boats.

Chris Partridge said...

It's Leadenhall Market but that's no kayak it's ART...

Adam Chodzko’s, Ghost is a kayak, a sculpture as vessel, a coffin, a costume and a camera rig. He designed the kayak to have a paddler in the back and a passenger – a member of the public in the front. The passenger is reclined, stretched out like a body in a coffin, with their head slightly raised. They occupy the horizontal interface between sky and water in an attempt to experience a state between sleep and wake, living and dying. A dome in the deck of the kayak also separates them physically and visually from the paddler at the back. Through each journey for Ghost, the artist and the passenger are on a metaphorical and mythological journey to the Island of the Dead. A camera, mounted on the bows, records the journey of each passenger, thus creating an archive of their experience.

JP said...

Chris is correct!

Was a bit surprised to see it hanging there. Apparently the Olympic's marathon ran through there in 2012 (according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadenhall_Market


Apparently, Adam Chodzko artworks explore the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour "in the gap between how we are and how we could be".

Tillerman said...

It has been paddled on the Tamar as well as the Thames.

JP said...

Yes, indeed. According to the Sculpture in the City web site: "Since 2010, Ghost has travelled along the River Medway, Kent, the River Tamar, Devon, through The Olympic Park, London, and along the Tyne, Newcastle"

O Docker said...


Just checked the Oyster Card site and it IS valid for mythological travel, but not during rush hours.

O Docker said...


PS: Also discovered that, since an agreement signed in the fall of 2014, the Island of the Dead is now the Coca-Cola Island of the Dead.

JP said...

Zombies, the walking dead and the tube late at night.... would so work together. And in the morning rush hour before coffee there seems to be many only half in this world propped up in corners of the carriages.

The Island of the Dead sounds like an edgy indy band or am I thinking of Rachmaninoff?