£1000 Reward to find Dinosaur Arsonist

With the amount of publicity and pure anger that last weeks arson attack on the Ultrasaurus has created, it’s no surprise that people have rallied together to created fund raising groups and commemorative Facebook pages, but I must admit I didn’t see a reward to catch the culprit coming.

“The shocking destruction of Southsea’s giant dinosaur has prompted businesses to offer a £1,000 reward and a year’s free pizza for information about those responsible. The Betting Room, in Albert Road, and Fry & Kent estate agents, in Stanley Street, have pledged rewards of £750 and £250 respectively, and are calling on other businesses to do the same. Mozzarella Joes, the dinosaur’s closest neighbour, has also offered free pizzas for a year to anyone coming forward with information.”

Owner of the Betting Room Peter Higgins said “In classic Portsmouth style we have shot ourselves in the foot. We are in a city which needs to encourage more tourism and this is going to make people ask what the point is of creating great attractions like this, if they are just going to get destroyed.”

Anyone with information should call Southsea Police station on 101.

Check out the full News article HERE and follow the community via Facebook over at RIP Southsea Dinosaur and the fund raising hopefuls at Ultrasauros Community.

Kite Festival Photograph: Hannah Mapplebeck on Facebook

RIP

Local artist Stuart Linfield has paid homage to the Ultrasaurus.

FOTOsaurus Competition

So Lunar Park has arrived on Southsea Common. It really is a pretty enormous Ultrasauros and I am sure that the view from the sea is quite amazing.

Aspex are running a FOTOsaurus competition – details below. Get up close and personal.

FOTOsaurus! Visit the dinosaur sculpture and get creative with any type of kit, from camera phone to box brownie! This photography competition is open to all ages and abilities. Submit your snaps to aspex as prints, on disk or via Facebook or Flickr. Closing date 31 August 2010. If you missed the opening ceremony then view the video below.

Heather and Ivan Morison – Luna Park, 1 August 2010 from Aspex Gallery on Vimeo.

Luna Park – Ultrasauros arrives in Southsea

Now I must admit I forgot about this. Somehow. Coming soon to an area of common ground near you is the truly epic Ultrasauros. A spectacular 16 metre tall recreation of an accidental dinosaur, will graze Southsea Common. A set of giant dinosaur bones was discovered in the 1970s in the United States by Professor Jim Jensen, and was believed to be the largest dinosaur ever. However, it was later revealed that the collection of fossils came from two different dinosaur species and Ultrasauros was, in fact, a fiction. Ultrasauros is without a doubt the largest structure to of ever stood freely on the common. To my knowledge that is…

Creators Heather & Ivan Morison will also be hosting a sculptural & photographic exhibition at The Aspex Gallery. ‘An Unreachable Country. A Long Way to Go’ will explore how things may transcend their given forms to create the vehicles for humankind to journey beyond the fragile and temporal world.

There is more information on events and activities surrounding the Ultrasuros’s stay in Southsea over at www.visitportsmouth.co.uk

Image : www.visitportsmouth.co.uk

Image : Aspex

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage