Johnny Depp to unveil first sculpture The Bunnyman in Istanbul
Johnny Depp will unveil his first sculpture next week in Istanbul, a two-metre white bronze work titled The Bunnyman, Deadline reported on 17 September.
The piece will be shown outdoors at Tersane Istanbul as one of the special projects of Contemporary Istanbul. The fair, a large marketplace where galleries display and sell work, runs from 22 to 27 September.
The sculpture is a guardian figure, half human and half rabbit, carrying what Depp calls a “sword of truth”. It stands tall in bright white bronze and is built to be seen in the open air.
The story behind it starts at home. The figure began as a drawing by Depp’s son Jack, made when he was about five years old. That sketch reminded Depp of a dream he kept having at age five or six, and he held on to the image.
Since then the Bunnyman has kept reappearing. It has turned up across Depp’s sketches, paintings and prints over the years, becoming a repeat character in his visual work.
To make it stand in three dimensions, Depp worked with the Sigg Art Foundation and Pantheon Art alongside Fonderia Artistica Battaglia in Milan. The foundry, a workshop where bronze is cast and finished, produced the sculpture with the two art organisations.
The Istanbul unveiling follows Depp’s recent activity as an exhibiting artist. His show A Bunch of Stuff at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai brings together more than 200 of his artworks, from drawings to larger pieces.
The setting is striking. Tersane Istanbul is a historic Ottoman shipyard on the Golden Horn, now reused as the fair’s main venue. Contemporary Istanbul, which says it launched in 2006, now sits among more than 350 art fairs worldwide and hosts galleries and visitors from many countries, according to its own site Contemporary Istanbul.
What makes this stand out is the personal thread. For fans, this is not a film prop or a side project. It is a childhood drawing, a remembered dream and years of sketchbooks, now cast in bronze at monumental scale.
