'It's utterly relentless' - Leeds artist breaks silence after men 'grope and kiss' model statue
A Leeds artist has hit out at men touching his lifelike waxwork statue of a young woman ‘inappropriately,’ 'groping and kissing' her on a number of occasions.
Rory Macbeth, 57, feels ‘sick and astonished’ after seeing how ‘relentless’ sexual assault is for women just by standing next to his sculpture. He’s stood by while she’s been groped on her backside and breasts, and even been kissed on the lips.
Rory is an accomplished artists, based in Otley with his 16-year-old son, who has an impressive career in education, working at universities in Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow. After growing sick of the bureaucracy of the education system, he’s currently funding his own breakout art school by modelling his lifelike waxwork through a whole range of cities.
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Rory said: “It’s quite weird. People touch her a lot and sometimes inappropriately. Particularly, in young men, or a group of young men and there’s one who wants to show off and does something pretty problematic.
“When I call them out on, their response is always the same, ‘Oh, sorry, I thought she was real’. Which is obviously profoundly worse, if you’re groping her a*** or kissing her on the lips which has happened twice in the past month.”
The wax model is called Flora, inspired by buskers who take to the streets as ‘living statues’. The model is supposed to depict a young woman pretending to be the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, Flora.
Draped in a white shawl, beads and clutching onto a bouget of flowers, she’s been designed to look as lifelike as possible with human flaws such as patchy white paint work, a pair of scrappy looking shoes poking out below her dress and white smudges on a nearby water bottle.
Rory has said the majority of people are completely fooled by the statue which has led to a lot of people attempting to communicate with her. Like shouting ‘boo!’ in a bid to get a reaction. He says most of these interactions are quite sweet with people complimenting her – but it’s also opened his eyes to the far uglier type of behaviour in society.
'It makes me feel pretty sick'
Rory said people even ‘dig their nails into her skin’. He’s found this ‘astonishing’ irrespective of whether people think she’s a waxwork or a real person.
Rory added that young men have made ‘unpleasant’ comments, asking how ‘detailed’ she is under the dress, even after he’s explained she’s a statue. Her hands and her head are the only wax parts, whereas the body is a shop dummy made from fibreglass.
On the two occasions where men have kissed her on the lips, one was a drunk man, who Rory suspects had also been taking drugs, and the other was a sober individual who was trying to impress his friends. He’s said that after these incidents, bizarrely, they still thought she was a real person.
Rory said: “It’s opened my eyes. I’d always considered myself to be quite well-informed. I know that women get a lot of hassle from men but until I was looking after Flora in city centres, I had no idea how utterly relentless it is. It’s astonishing, I don’t know how women put up with it.
“That’s a really serious thing I didn’t think would come out of taking her around. She might end up highlighting some of those things. It makes me feel pretty sick. A whole raft of things. Disappointed there’s so much behaviour like that and shocked at the extent to which that happens.”
Rory has launched a TikTok channel which exhibits people’s reactions to Flora. His art-school Ghost Art School, which has no fee and is funded by Rory, can be found, here.
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