Elephantman
Elephantman is a London based artist primarily known for his street art which consists of finding opportune places in cities and fixing down elephant sculptures and ceramic plaques, and in so doing creating an extensive series of guerilla installations in London, Paris, and Berlin as well as a number of other cities and towns in the UK. The focus of the work is what he calls the Empathy Revolution, a new evolution for humanity where we will learn to see the other beings and systems which we share the planet with as fellow participants in symbiotic relationship rather merely resources to exploit to exhaustion.
The elephant motif is seen as a thought wedge: if someone could image that elephants, with their well documented extraordinary intelligence, might also be people, then this opens the door for other non human species to be considered as persons, rather than ‘things’ as they are legally defined today.
While this seems like a serious topic, there is nonetheless humour, love and joy in his art practice, and a cheeky rebelliousness in his, technically illegal, public work.