Rachel Fieldhouse
Art

Shark House owner not happy about protected status

A whopping 7.6-metre sculpture of a shark diving through the roof of a house in Oxford, England has been made a protected landmark - but the man who lives there isn’t pleased by the news.

Magnus Hanson-Heine loves the sculpture, which his father, Bill Heine, erected with the help of a local sculptor, but says making it protected as a “special contribution” to the community ignores some key messages his father was trying to make.

Mr Heine first installed the unusual sculpture in 1986 as an anti-war, anti-nuke protest, after he heard US warplanes fly over his house and discovered they were going to bomb Tripoli in retaliation for Libyan sponsorship of terrorist attacks on US troops.

The image of a shark crashing through the roof captured the shock that would have been felt when the bombs dropped on people’s homes, Mr Hanson-Heine said.

But, Mr Hanson-Heine’s issue with the protection of the sculpture comes after it was installed without the approval of local council officials, with his father arguing that he didn’t think they should be able to decide what art people see.

Mr Hanson-Heine said that the decision was “absurd” after the council had spent years trying to remove it.

“Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd on the face of it,” Mr Hanson-Heine told The Associated Press.

Mr Heine, who passed away in 2019, built the great white shark out of fibreglass with his friend, sculptor John Buckley in April.

They installed it on August 9, the 41st anniversary of the day the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki during World War II.

Mr Hanson-Heine said the sculpture’s anti-war message is just as relevant today, with Russian bombs falling on Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin delivering thinly veiled threats of nuclear war.

“That’s obviously something that the people in Ukraine are experiencing right now in very real time,” the quantum chemist said.

“But certainly when there’s nuclear weapons on the stage, which has been through my entire life, that’s always a very real threat.”

Despite its serious message, the shark is also the subject of some more light-hearted content, with photos on its very own website including one of Mr Heine sharing a glass of wine with the shark and another of a passer-by posed to look as if she’s eating it.

When asked whether the shark's head can be found inside the home, Mr Hanson-Heine laughed.

“I believe it was an urban myth for a while that it was poking above the toilet,” he said.

“But no.”

Images: The Shark House

Tags:
Art, Protest, Anti-war, Shark, UK