PICKING NOSES IN LONDON'S WEST END
In 1997 artist Rick Buckley decided to stage a protest against the appearance of CCTV cameras across the streets of London.
These surveillance cameras were drawing an awful lot of criticism, since many people were starting to view them as a huge step closer to a Big Brother state.
Whereas the less artistic amongst us might choose to protest with acts of wanton vandalism, Rick Buckley decided to go for a far more subtle and, it must be said, humorous approach.
And thus it came to pass that the concept of The Seven Noses of Soho was born.
A Situationist Inspired Artwork
Inspired by the activities of the Situationists – artists and writers who would perform sporadic, illegal actions – Rick decided to, quite literally, put his nose to the grindstone, and set out to place plaster of Paris and polymer casts of his own nose on various structures across London right under the noses, so to speak, of the liberty threatening CCTV Cameras.
The Noses Turn Up In London
Thus it was that, armed with nothing more than models of his own conk and a toothpaste tube of glue, this urban (and urbane) guerilla set out on his covert mission to attach casts of his own schnozzle to around 35 landmarks across the capital and, having obtained photographic evidence of the mission accomplished, he sat back and waited, hoping that his cover would not be blown.
As he told the London Evening Standard when, under pressure from his girlfriend, he finally decided to come clean, and blow the whistle, about his past in October 2011:-
“I wanted to see if I could get away with it without being detected. The afterthought was that it would be great if these protrusions would become part of the structure themselves.”
Some of the noses were sniffed out and removed within a matter of days or weeks.
But others survived and, since Rick chose not to publicise his protest, all manner of urban myths began dribbling out concerning the origins of the mysterious protuberances.
Find Them All And Great Wealth Is Yours!
One of the most oft quoted of these myths is that if you can locate all seven of the seven noses of Soho (despite the fact that, at least one of them is not actually in Soho) then great wealth will come your way.
Who can resist the possibility of such a reward for performing the, seemingly simple, task of picking a few noses in Soho?