Three skateboard decks celebrating three Greek-mythology-inspired works of the revered English sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert RA.
PERSEUS ARMING (8.0” x 31.7”)
Alfred Gilbert was 27 when the work was completed, and, it stands to reason, younger still when it began. It depicts Perseus at a similarly early stage in his career — something like a mortal who had to look to his equipment — and could well be read as an allegory of the artist’s own ambition.
ICARUS (8.125” x 31.7”)
Like Perseus slightly before him, the subject choice reflects not only Gilbert’s youthful recklessness, but also his consciousness of it.
ANTEROS (8.5” x 32.0”)
The figurative jewel in the crown that is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain at Piccadilly, Anteros — so popularly and for so long mistaken as his frivolous tyrant of a brother, Eros, that many think he may as well be — symbolises the selfless, philanthropic love of the Earl for the poor, commemorating in particular his achievement in replacing child-labour with school education. Gilbert wrote about the bronze — actually aluminium — of ‘blindfolded Love sending forth indiscriminately, yet with purpose, his missile of kindness, always with the swiftness the bird has from its wings’.
Much of Alfred Gilbert’s work, including Perseus Arming and a model for Anteros, is currently on display at Tate Britain.
Even more, thankfully, is on display at street level.
26th April 2023