Thing of the Day 

The Spudniks are Back!

April 7th 2011

Next time you're on the bus, bored to insanity, pay attention to the top of the bus shelters as they go by.  If you're lucky, you might see one of these:

What are they? Where did they come from?  They first appeared five years ago-ish, little bombs of colour and playfulness, or ominous viruses, or scuttling beasts.... or just potatoes with things stuck in them.

But potatoes, in themselves, are rather magical: they  change over time. Rot, grow, shrivel, blow away.  Look closely at this picture of the one of the shiny new batch of critters that appeared in March this year - is that one of the old ones, poignantly blackened by the elements together by the new? Or a melanistic rarity?

 These creatures seem to use the 48 bus route from Hackney to London Bridge as their migration path. Weirdly enough, this is the same migration path us Organs take to Resonance 104.4 FM every Sunday to broadcast.

There is an entity called NoNose associated with these things; his elusiveness is all for the best.  But he has had showings of other work, which have a manic, gritted-teeth humour to them underlying a sneaky amount of depth.  We like his sculpture entitled 'Shergar':

Here's a load of Bus Stop Critters from the earlier batches. Why, WHY have they re-appeared?  Maybe NoNose knows that we're in dire need of this kind of fragile joy right now.   Little cries of delight on the bus.