Art for art’s sake

From The Oldie

Earlier this year, the people of the capital of Wales were apparently somewhat baffled to see blocks of yellow paint daubed over the Cardiff Bay Barrage. Given the current mania for public art, though, they probably should have realised it was something important, and indeed it was: The Three Ellipses For Three Locks by the Swiss-born artist Felice Varini formed three concentric circles – but you could only see them if you stood at one specific spot. Smart, eh?

Mansfield’s citizens have been treated to a rather more obvious piece called High Heels – a six-metre high pair of stainless steel stilettos, and in Stroud artist Philip Thompson is currently putting the final touches to his three-metre tall metal sculpture, titled Heart Of Stroud that will sit outside Stroud College.

While the Victorians treated their citizens to public parks, libraries and museums so today’s mania for “regeneration” is resulting in thousands of public artworks springing up like giant stainless steel and fibreglass weeds in our towns and cities.

“Local authorities park hundreds of anodyne public sculptures like tanks in a war of cultural aggression against the relatively uneducated,” wrote the artist Grayson Perry in The Times. “They hope that these civic baubles will replace social capital that has been lost to decades of upheaval in patterns of work, family and leisure time.”

You can see his point. The pomposity behind these simplistic, insensitive creations that litter the nation is quite breathtaking.

As they walk along a newly created pedestrian route from a viaduct in Hymers Court, next to the Tyne Bridge for example, the people of Gateshead can be inspired by the words “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,” that bark at them from five archways that form part of a railway viaduct.

“No, No, No, No, No” is “deliberately ambiguous”, according to Miles Thurlow , who created the work with fellow artist Cath Campbell (sort of complex idea that needs the creative input of not one but two artists, obviously). “By giving an answer, it forces you to find a question. The meaning comes from the person who’s looking at it, and not directly from the piece itself.”

The piece, according to Councillor John McElroy, “cabinet member for culture” – there’s posh – “challenges the way we think about ordinary locations”.

From Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North in Gateshead to the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth – cost a mere £35 million – public art is local government on steroids. You think I’m a dreary functionary? Well, look at my tower, mate. Liverpool is spending a staggering £96 million on its Capital of Culture programme (including £450,000 for a sculpture by Londoner Richard Wilson, an installation that rotates an oval panel cut from the side of a derelict office block through 360 degrees).

But it’s not just our urban areas in need of “regeneration”. On Tiree in the Inner Hebrides residents have been treated to an installation An Turas near the ferry port that acts as a shelter. Alas it was conceived by Tiree Arts Enterprise, a group of local and visiting artists, so much of it doesn’t have a roof. Nor is there a heater. Or any seats – which seems to make it at £98,000 rather poor value, even if it is, according to Tiree Arts Enterprise, “a work of individuality, epic in scale, aesthetically beautiful and of contemporary and Scottish cultural significance”.

Meanwhile, back in the North East of England, the 141,000 residents of south east Northumberland have been lucky enough to have their own public art “initiative” Inspire and their own public art and design officer, Wendy Stott. Wendy has rolled up her sleeves up to help conceive the country’s first offshore sculpture in the sea off the village of Newbiggin. The commission – part of a £10 million sea-defence breakwater scheme – is entitled Couple and comprises two bronze figures measuring five metres tall, which will stand 300 metres out into the bay.

“My hope is that the sculpture will embody some of the emotion we all feel when contemplating the sea, the sky and the horizon,” says the artist Sean Henry.

He shouldn’t bank on it. Last year Hackney Co-operative Developments decided to uncover a 4ft stencil of a girl wearing a frilly dress and gas mask by the ‘subersive’ graffiti artist Banksy. Alas, cleaners spotted the graffiti 24 hours before the official opening of Gillet Square and removed every trace of this great work. Their emotional response to this great work speaks volumes for what public art really means to ordinary people.