With the winter season quickly approaching as cold mists set in and Christmas trees go up, Kingston’s adornments are looking different this season with the welcoming of a new art exhibition, ‘Wild Kingston,’ by dynamic art duo, Gillie and Marc.
The pair, who first began creating bronze sculptures in 2004, place the focus of the collection on animal awareness and preservation with each sculpture showing an abstract portrayal of animals or human-animal hybrid figures.
‘Wild Kingston’ features nine statues distributed across the town, making for an enjoyable discovery trail, and each is complete with a QR code that can be scanned to find information about the animals featured or to donate to the World Wildlife Fund for climate change and animal preservation.
The sculptures have been a huge hit, with local resident, Isabel Harris, 17, stating, ‘I love the new sculptures, especially the statue of the dog and gorilla holding cameras! I think they add some fun to what could be a boring walk.’
The sculpture Harris references here is ‘The Eastern Lowland Gorilla Only Shoots Photos with Dogman,’ an iconic piece with an Eastern Lowland gorilla stood next to a hybrid man-dog and the two pose as photographers, holding cameras as if snapping pictures of locals.
On their website, however, Gillie and Marc share the hidden message about animal cruelty, it showing ‘two opposites coming together as best friends’ to ‘show the world that the best show is with a camera, never a gun.’
Go and have a look yourself before the exhibition ends in November 2025!
