While riding my bike around London, I stumbled upon this and was like Surprise sharks raise questions that need answers. So once back home, to Google I went, with a search query that would turn the next six weeks of my life real weird with phone calls and legal consultations and hundreds of pages of documentation about zoning, but it started with "I'm feeling lucky" which landed me on a Guardian newspaper article about the sharks. They're part of an art competition. Apparently shark art has a history in England. Okay, I guess… But the article said the sharks were next to a warehouse in the London Borough of Hackney but I found them next to a boat club in Islington. Well, can't just let a thing like that go! [Oh, ah, haha. Give me a second. Been at this for awhile.] Okay, so back to Google, where I found Antepavilion, the warehouse hosting the art competition, with a giant balloon outside? Okay, dontgetdistracted, you're here for the shark art competition! But wait, Hackney Fight? What's this? And so it began. It seemed like because of the sharks, Hackney Borough was trying to get this warehouse/artist studio place shut down. But the more I read, the weirder it got. Like this Correspondence with the Police? About their forced entry into the warehouse to stop a ballet performance… What?! Okay. Too much. Stop. Back. Back. Back to the original competition, which had asked art entrants to consider quote, One entrant? SHARKS! Five of them, full-scale (the big one's a megalodon) leaping from the water, singing. The title of this piece SHARKS! with an exclamation mark. What could compete with that? Nothing. Which is why SHARKS! won and construction began. Cool, but like, what's the deal with the beef in this brief? Well, now weeks later and after way more hours of stress than I ever expected from this project, I can now tell you a very simplified version of what happened for comprehensibility reasons. And legal reasons. It starts five years ago, when Antepavilion held their first art competition with winner H-VAC. A sitting area atop the warehouse roof from which to admire the canal. It's disguised... disguised... as an air duct to hide from Hackney and planning permission. The next year's winner was an inflatable yellow barge. That's what this is. Also, did you notice H-VAC the first time? [gleefully]
Admit it, you didn't, cuz it's disguised. Anyway. The barge inflated so it could be a pop-up transportable venue space that could deflate and disappear at a moments notice. And also so it could fit under London's many tiny canal bridges like the ones on either side of the warehouse. The year after's winner (I swear this is all connected) the Potemkin Theater. It's just one wall, nothing to see here, but also serves as the backdrop for a stage on the roof. It was this last art erection, the opposite of incognito, that drew the attention of the London Borough of Hackney. "Oi," Said Hackney. Thus, these three arts are the history of how the Hackney hatchet came down. But Antepavilion didn't remove their art, instead basing their brief on these events, and picking the purposefully provocative Sharks! as the winner. Now as their construction finished and installation approached what happened next is... debated. Antepavilion says The Guardian approached them to do an article about Sharks!. A telephone interview conducted and an article written. The very article I would find months later, after publication. But pre-publication, according to Antepavilion, the article contained, "defamatory misquotes" and "deliberate misrepresentations." Antepavilion requested it be changed and wanted a copy of the recorded interview. The Guardian refused to change anything, didn't comment on the recording, instead asking for what the misquote was, leading Antepavilion to ask for the recording of the interview and around and around it went. Anyway, The Guardian's article, which did get published as written and may or may not have misrepresented Antepavilion, may or may not have tipped off the London Borough of Hackney that Antepavilion was art-ing again, soon to install the extremely impossible-not-to-notice Sharks! Hackney packed the paper in their little briefcase to use as evidence as they ran to a London judge to grant an emergency injunction to stop Sharks! They had to run because that very morning the sharks were being loaded into the canal. One shark in the water. [epic electronic music] Two sharks in the water. [epic electronic music] Three sharks in the water. [epic electronic music] [Grey]
Four shar... [Hackney]
Shop that shark! [Hackney]
INJUNCTED! [Antepavilion]
Wait, let me see that. Oooh, this is very confusing. I need to check with my lawyer about what this means. Four sharks in the water. [Hackney]
No seriously! IN-JUNC-TED! [Grey]
And thus Hackney blocked the final shark and halted Antepavilion from doing anything without express planning permission until further judgment. [Hackney]
Look here, you're in a conservation area, you can't just do what you want. [Grey]
But, four sharks had escaped. And the injunction didn't require their removal. So, in the canal they stayed. While trapped inside, the final fifth looked on. Thus in this moment, the halted Sharks! became the pitch perfect presentation of planning permission versus artistic freedom as the paperwork grew from injunctions to witness statements, permission applications, briefs, reports on the history of art on the site, what "in keeping with the conservation area" means, queries of if Sharks! block the canal traffic, [Hey, wait! Who actually controls the canal?] and arguments about if the very existence of the conservation area is, like an abuse of power, or a scam? [I have no legal stance here please don't sue me.] I can't say a tenth of what I've heard, but, well, the two bridges are conserved, the canal is a conservation area, but the conservation area also happens to swoop up to include this one warehouse, and it's Hackney who can block building in a conservation area and it's also Hackney that gets to draw where the conservation area is. I mean, it's a lovely warehouse but... hmmmm. However, the thing is, to Antepavilion, all of these literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of legal documentation and countless human hours of everyone involved in a fight over shark sculpture are part of art of Sharks! itself. Even the judges dragged into this make comments in their dry way, about what a tangled pain this case is. Sidenote: I particularly enjoyed how since the title of Sharks! includes an exclamation mark, so too must all these legal documents, which was funny every time I read it. Sharks! Okay, back to the story. For months, Sharks! chilled outside the warehouse while the paperwork rained down, though Hackney did eventually get them double injuncted and forced back inside. Meanwhile, up the canal happens to be the Islington Boat Club, members of which apparently chugged by sometimes to watch the ballet, and who developed a soft spot in their heart for Sharks! and they had water rights in their section of the canal and so decided to offer their club as a new home. Antepavilion agreed to move the sharks contingent on the Boat Club promising to tell Antepavilion about any bureaucratic paperwork problems that might arise. [Antepavilion]
Are you guys sure you have rights to the water? [Grey]
As all those future papers would be part of the art of Sharks! too. The Boat Club agreed, and the sharks were brought up the canal to where they currently reside, delightfully right in full view of a primary school, that doubtless all the kids there now call shark school, and right next to a public playground where Sharks! is already inspiring the next generation of English shark artists and where you too can go see them in their full sharkyness. But, if you do want to see them, you better hurry while you can. See, sometime after the relocation, the Islington Boat Club told Antepavilion, [Islington Boat Club]
Look you need to take your sharks back, mate. [Antepavilion
Why? [Islington Boat Club]
Ahhhhh, we won't tell you. [Antepavilion
But why? [Grey]
And then the Boat Club ghosted Antepavilion never to give a reason. What happened is unknown, but if one were to speculate [I have no legal stance here please don't sue me.] the Boat Club seems… underdeveloped for the value of the property it's on, and the appearance of Sharks! could have thrust them into a lot of bureaucratic trouble they weren't expecting about what exactly their rights to the water are. But who knows? Well, the Boat Club knows, but they're not saying anything other than [Islington Boat Club]
Time to go, Sharks!! [Grey]
They must be removed before the end of this month. Put back into the warehouse, held behind bars of planning permission paperwork, never to see the water again. Although. There's always that barge. Perhaps, Sharks! could ride again, technically not in the water, but upon it, able to travel up and down London's canals, looking for a new home. [lively violin music, Jonathan Vered performs Capriccio n.18 Op.1 in in C (corrente-allegro) by Niccolò Paganini] Sharks! [lively violin music, Jonathan Vered performs Capriccio n.18 Op.1 in in C (corrente-allegro) by Niccolò Paganini]
Who knew Sharks! would cause so much paperwork.
So is this video now piece of the artwork?
Fucking love planning disputes. In the UK they can get so petty and complicated.
I am going to copy what I wrote on the video itself cuz lazy and want to share. The sharks are actually quite famous in the London Architecture community, the original reason this artwork was related to sharks is due to another building permit legal battle in Oxford. You can actually see the image in the Guardian article he shows, where the shark is stuck on a roof of a quaint-looking English row house. Same story, local council blocked the building works done by the owner, so to stick it to them the owner put up the shark and classified it as art.
There are actually quite a few of those urban legends around London, near Elephant and Castle there is a T-34 Soviet Battle Tank, parked in a quiet neighborhood. The story goes that the owner could not build on his plot of land but could park vehicles, or he said he will put in a tank there, implying that it would be a water tank. Tom Scott has a fun little video about that. Come to think of it, when will Tom and Grey make a video together? Awesome video CGP.
The people that own the Anti pavilion (If I remember it was just one rich person.) also built a house on top of that warehouse, you can see it in all of the pictures from the canal! Which I dont actually know how they managed that, the warehouse under them is just an old rusty building.... has great parties though...
I'm fully invested in Sharks! now and hope for regular updates!
I love how the statements and filings became part of the art.... I was already in love with the Sharks! exhibit, but that the paperwork literally becoming part of it really gives it so much more life than a just a sculpture. Long live Sharks!
The biggest shock here: People actually use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature?!
That council being like this to those involved in the arts is nothing new as expressed in this little ditty from 23 years ago
NIMBYs ruin all the fun. Long live Sharks!