The installation of a new statue at the Imperial College of London is being opposed by students. According to them, it might be taken as a man standing on campus with a 10-foot penis. This summer, Antony Gormley’s sculpture “Alert” is scheduled to be installed. For daily email delivery of the newest tech news and scoops, subscribe to our newsletter. Imperial College London students are protesting the university’s plans to erect a new sculpture on their campus that they claim may be taken to represent a 10-foot horizontal phallus.
According to the university’s website. , Antony Gormley’s “ALERT” statue is a 20-foot stack of steel blocks intended to resemble a human crouching on their haunches.
According to the university’s website, it will be set up this summer in Dangoor Plaza on the South Kensington campus.
Due to the sculpture’s “obvious” resemblance to a man standing with an erect penis, Imperial College Union students have expressed concern that it may “damage the image and repute of the college,” according to The Guardian. .
The source published an analytical graphic outlining the sculpture’s component parts and several interpretations.
According to the students’ motion, “Alert is perceived as phallic by many regardless of creative purpose,” according to the visual arts publication ArtNews. .
The motion, according to the source, stated that the piece would be “considered improper for a major public display, considering the statue’s size,” but added that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with phallic iconography in art.
According to ArtNews, the motion also said that “the word ‘Alert’ might also be taken as alluding to the statue’s phallus being upright.”
The motion’s anonymous submitter told the visual arts journal The Art Newspaper that they didn’t think the protest would have any impact on the statue’s placement.
According to them, according to the publication, “I don’t imagine that the college will withdraw out of or listen to students about this kind of thing.”
One of the students’ primary worries, according to The Guardian, was that the statue’s interpretation as a phallus would be “exclusionary,” especially in light of the gender gap in scientific research.
An Imperial College London spokeswoman said to Insider in response to questions about the statue’s “phallic interpretation”: “Sir Antony Gormley is one of the world’s greatest living artists, and we are pleased to have been granted one of his renowned sculptures.”
