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The Three-Legged Golden Toad

Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld
Three-Legged Golden Toad by ilka Leukefeld

The Three-Legged Golden Toad featured in the exhibition Twenty-five Years of German Unity Mirrored in the Arts at the German Embassy’s 2015 Frieze Fringe Event, alongside paintings by Peter Herrmann, sculpture by Hans Scheib and a film by Jürgen Böttcher. (Photographs: Marsha Dunstan/Pinktree.)

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ilka Leukefeld’s latest work, The Three-Legged Golden Toad, is a humorous reflection on the tough life of an artist and a stern review of contemporary political and environmental events. It was first shown at the German Embassy’s Frieze Fringe Event in London, October 2015.

The sculptural installation combines Leukefeld’s interpretation of the money-charm Jin Chan, a three-legged money toad that carries a coin in its mouth, and that poster child of the environmental crisis as measured by amphibian decline, the Golden Toad, last sighted in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. The artist’s concern with interconnectedness of all things, inspired by the books of British writer Douglas Adams, also plays an important part in this work.

The Three-Legged Golden Toad is the latest in an on-going series interpreting the long list of extinct creatures that Leukefeld began for the exhibition Of Global Madness in April 2015. All her sculptures are made from specifically chosen recycled or found objects, paper and wire. Here, glossy GEO magazine’s edition entitled ‘So glaubt der Mensch / This is how humankind believes’ is deliberately used as filling material for the toad. The outer skin is made up of two fluorescent yellow cycling jackets and part of a workman’s high-visibility waistcoat. A blown glass bulb, a glass lens and gold foil peeled off the cardboard from salmon wrapping all help to imitate and recreate the outstandingly beautiful black and gold eyes of the extinct Golden Toad.

Gold chocolate coins in their little orange plastic nets hanging from the toad’s mouth mirror the Asian lucky charm that can be found sitting on a small but fake fortune in every feng-shui-aware household or business premises. The hanging items that form the rest of the new room installation are crushed plastic bottles and empty pill packets (one advertising instant Karma), which reference the vast carpets of plastic waste floating on the seas.

Fotos und Texte, wenn nicht anders angegeben // Unless otherwise stated, all images, videos and text © ilka Leukefeld, 2023. All rights reserved.
Website: Pinktree
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