Police called to Kings Domain Monday morning to find head removed and paint thrown at monument
A statue of King George V has been beheaded and covered in red paint in the latest attack on colonial monuments in Victoria.
Police were called to the statue in Melbourne’s Kings Domain on Linlithgow Avenue just after 9am on Monday.
Continue reading...Both monuments reportedly spray-painted with ‘The colony will fall’ in apparent protest against Australia Day date
Victoria police are investigating “criminal damage” to a century-old Captain Cook statue in St Kilda in an apparent protest over the Australia Day public holiday.
Another statue, of Queen Victoria near the Melbourne city centre, was doused in red paint.
Continue reading...Held by Cambridge University for more than 250 years, the spears mark ‘first point in shared history’
Four spears stolen from Kamay, now known as Botany Bay in Sydney, by Captain James Cook, a then Lieutenant, and his crew, are to be returned to their traditional owners after more than 250 years.
The Kamay spears were among 40 recorded as being taken on to the HMB Endeavour in 1770, at the time of first contact between those aboard the ship and the local Gweagal people.
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Continue reading...Eight-metre-tall statue in pose some liken to a Nazi salute will be moved from Cairns to the Atherton Tablelands
A statue of a Captain James Cook with an arm raised in a position that some liken to a Nazi salute has been removed from a main street in Cairns.
Demolition contractor Martin Anton hopes to be the unlikely saviour of the controversial statue, which had been used to advertise a topless bar, after reportedly buying the statue for a token $1.
Continue reading...In the 18th century, the naval explorer was worshipped as a deity. Now his statues are being defaced across the lands he visited
In a type of neoclassical painting one might call The Apotheosis of X, the dead hero is bundled up to heaven by a host of angels, usually in a windswept tumult of robes, wings and clouds. A crowd of grieving mortals watches from below as their hero becomes divine. It’s a celestial scramble: in Rubens’ sumptuous Apotheosis of James I, heaven is chaos and James looks terrified at having arrived.
In Barralet’s Apotheosis of Washington, the dead president has his arms outstretched in a crucified pose, while Father Time and the angel of immortality bear him up to heaven. In a mid-1860s Apotheosis, a freshly assassinated Lincoln joins Washington in the sky, and clings to him in a tight hug. In Fragonard’s Apotheosis of Franklin, the new god reaches back to Earth with one hand while a stern angel, grasping his other hand, drags him upward.
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