'Conversation Piece'

Adjacent to the small, rocky Little Haven Beach in South Shields, Northumberland, stand 22 strangely shaped bronze figures, each weighing about a quarter of a ton. The unusual installation is by Spanish artist Juan Muñoz. The bulbous bases upon which these figures sit have led to the locals naming them the “Weebles” because of their similarity to the toys produced in 1971 by the company Playskool, with the jingle: “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” These massive bronze Weebles don’t topple over, but neither do they wobble—though many people who come across them can’t resist trying.

This 1996 installation is one of a number in a series by the artist. He named it Conservation Pieces after the way the figures stand as if in a family conversation, in the way that artists such as Hogarth made popular during the early 18th century. Muñoz worked on his series—which extended from Pittsburgh to Madrid to Dublin—until he died suddenly in 2001.

“Some of the best figurative sculptures seem to be aware of the impossibility of looking alive and aware of the boundaries they can occupy,” Muñoz once said about the piece. “The most successful ones are the ones that state those limits, the space between being just a sculpture and the man walking down the street. Not for a split second can you confuse one with the other.”