My beef with public art

I was listening to the news on the radio recently, which is something I don’t do very often. It featured an article about the a sculpture by Anish Kapoor set to produce the worlds largest piece of public art in Middlesbrough.

In case you don’t know anything about it the piece is called Temenos and be located between the Transporter Bridge and Middlesbrough Football Club. It’ll have been 10 years in the making and cost £2.7m. Temenos is however set to become just one of many sculptures as part of the ‘rejuvenation’ of Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington set to cost £15m.

To get an idea of scale Temenos will be 110m long or the size of a football pitch and 50m high.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of public art, I’m one of those people who still doesn’t like Anthony Gormley’s Angel Of The North sculpture. If your a regular reader to this site you’ll realise that I don’t say these things because I hate art or I think it should always be in galleries. Quite the contrary, art should be for everyone.

But have you ever been to Middlesbrough?

Recently its been in the news for other reasons, massive job losses at the Corus steel working plant. The recession it seems is hitting the region hard and you can’t help but feel the money would have been better invested elsewhere.

“When I went to Middlesbrough for the New Statesman last year to find out how the recession was affecting the area, I found an atmosphere of grim transition — of council officials and local radio presenters grinning desperately through the decline of the last of Teesside’s manufacturing industries, hoping to patch up huge wounds with regeneration rhetoric.” Dan Hancox

I understand that this is a horribly grim opinion of public art and one that could be more positive.

“There are all the arguments about public art – couldn’t we have spent money on a hospital, say – and all the arguments are correct. But what happens after a while is that these things have the possibility of infiltrating people’s consciousness. You can’t say it’s going to happen, but you can hope it does.” Anish Kapoor

Its a very lofty ambition for public art to achieve but even Kapoor himself says that he ‘hopes’ it will change the individuals view of Middlesbrough. Its not a guaranteed result of spending all that money. In my experience a place doesn’t change until its people do.

Why not invest money to local artists who otherwise struggle to make a name in the region? Part of the problem with public art is that the money gets invested into big name artists when regional ones can create beautiful pieces and have first hand experience of the region.

Why do all public sculptures have to be so huge? One of my favourite pieces of public art is Tracy Emin’s Sparrow – even though yes it is too expensive.

While we’re on good public art I also really like the Love sculpture designed by Robert Indiana. Its both an iconic piece of art and a great display of typography.

I also really like traditional sculptures otherwise known as ‘blokes on horses’. Theres something attractive about the authoritarian nature of these sculptures, and you can feel somehow connected to the past by viewing them in public spaces.

Regardless of if you think they’re good on not ultimately its that test of time that public art has to endure.

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