History’s greatest figures have long been immortalized in statue form, from Julius Caesar to Admiral Lord Nelson. Today an artist from Birmingham has painted four of his own town’s men in bronze.
Local artist Tat Vision unveiled a statue of ‘four guys in jeans’ outside Birmingham New Street station on Saturday – in reference to a viral internet meme sparked by a photograph taken a few years ago.
The photo of Kevin Rooney, Alex Lacey, Jamie Phillips and Connor Humpage was taken before they enjoyed a night out in 2019 but went viral the following year.
The photo of the four men dressed in skinny jeans and posing awkwardly has spawned several parodies and even an animation that appears to show them singing a song of the sea.
The artist said he hoped to pay homage to the four men, “inspired by ancient Greek statues”, although his bronze was assembled using mannequins and papier-mâché.
“It took me a few weeks, on and off, to do it,” said Tat Vision BirminghamLive.
“I used four female mannequins, which I covered in jeans and tight women’s tops. The heads are made of papier-mâché and the whole thing was painted to have a nice shiny bronze effect.
The artist said he was inspired by the much-derided bust of Cristiano Ronaldo and the statue of Matthew Boulton, James Watt and William Murdoch which stands near the Library of Birmingham.
The sculpture was unveiled outside All Bar One in the city, close to where the original photo was taken.
It was built as part of the Birmingham Weekender arts event in the city.
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