Funny takes on heritage

THE George Town Unesco World Heritage Site steel rod caricatures project will be completed ahead of time.

Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) Planning Committee alternate chairman Felix Ooi Keat Hin said the target was to complete and install all 51 sculptures by December.

Initially, the sculptures were slated to be put up in stages around the heritage enclave by the first half of 2013.

To date, 25 sculptures have been installed.

Eight designs under phase four of the project were approved last year, he said.

However, two designs could not be installed yet, pending approval from the buildings’ owners.

Designed by cartoonists Tang Mun Kian and Mr Lefty from ‘Sculpture At Work’, the six sculptures were put up recently in Muntri Street, Stewart Lane, Prangin Lane, King Street, Victoria Street and Kimberly Street.

They are Narrowest Five Foot Way, Win-Win Situation, Kopi ‘O’, No Plastic Bag, Property and Untrained Parakeet.

While the Narrowest Five Foot Way is rather straightforward marking of George Town’s ‘less-than-five-feet’ five-foot way, Kopi ‘O’ is a witty take on the trendy Gen Y and their love for expensive coffee.

Depicting a youngster ordering a “tall, double-shot, decaf espresso” at a traditional kopi tiam, the caricature shows how the waitress simply sums the order up as “kopi-o-kau”.

Property takes the public back to the 1800s when the Victoria Street seafront was a thriving hub of shops and godowns.

In No Plastic Bag, a basket weaver sniggers as he sees a potential customer — a fuming lady struggling to hold on to her fruits, vegetables and salted fish, in Prangin Lane — a petty-trading neighbourhood.

An Indian fortune teller-astrologer who uses green parakeets to foretell the future is the ‘star’ of Untrained Parakeet and Win-Win Situation tells of how Muntri Street was named after Perak’s Malay chieftain Ngah Ibrahim.

The sculptures installed earlier under phases one, two and three are Mr Five Foot Way (a small time trader running his business by the five-foot way pavement), Kedai Tuak (a man climbing what he mistakenly thinks is the betelnut palm), Where’s My Husband? (a panicky-looking man climbing out a window dressed only in his shorts), Limousine (an artisan making a paper car effigy for the afterlife) and Waterway (a trader on a small sampan professing his love to a young maiden staring down from her bedroom window).

There are also the sculptures Escape (an escape rope dangling from the window as the building was originally a jailhouse), Bullock Cart Wheel (a bullock cart with antique half-cent coins as wheels), Cow and Fish (a cow running away from the slaughterhouse and a woman chasing after a cat stealing her fish), Labourer to Trader (traders skilfully balancing their wares on their heads), One Leg Kicks All (an amah, or Cantonese domestic servant, going about her daily duties) and Too Hot(sailors crying out for water after tucking into a plate of spicy noodles).

The other sculptures are Jimmy Choo (a woman excitedly admiring a pair of exquisite shoes made by a veteran cobbler and his protege),Same Taste, Same Look (traditional Cantonese Dim Sum restaurants),3 Generations (old char koay teow seller), Ting Ting Thong (rock candy seller), Rope Style (a mother braiding her daughter’s hair like a rope),Procession (the Tua Pek Kong grand float procession), Tok Tok Mee(explains the name of the well-loved fare as the hawker used to knock two bamboo sticks together to attract customers) and Too Narrow (a hand-pulled rickshaw navigating through the narrow street).

The sculptures were erected at various heritage spots in the city under the ‘Marking George Town’ project to create awareness about the historical and cultural identity of the local sites in the city.

The total cost of the project is RM1.02mil.

Kuala Lumpur-based company ‘Sculpture At Work’ won the ‘Marking George Town — An Idea Competition for a Unesco World Heritage Site’ contest in April, 2010, to design the sculptures. - The Star