Yet this is no refugee from some Brobdingnagian tsunami. Associated with a flotilla of little tugboats, each with their own rubber duck hunting gear on top of, the duck hunting gear (who we could contact Bob!) was enjoying the start of Sydney’s yearly art festival The festival includes theatre, music, dance, film, talks and lots of other art related event, so Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman was invited to bring his own inimitable talents to the Australian city.
The duck’s ratios are tremendous – over 15 metres in size it makes for a fantastically unusual vision against the background of the town. Other tremendous geese by Hofman have showed up in places around the world so certainly Australia’s convert had to come at some point.
Australia’s summer several weeks season are, to say the least, hot and the festival (which started in 1977) was developed to provide some life in to its warm induced summer several weeks sleepiness. Since its beginning it has expanded each year and is now one of Australia’s greatest social activities.
Hofman has described the idea behind the large duck hunting gear thus: "We are living on a planet, we are one family, and the global waters are our bathtub, so it joins people." That is a reasonable enough purpose, for sure – yet this gloriously silly scene does not really need a purpose. Art for art’s benefit – or, more simply, just because.
Sydney Australia Rubber Duck
