Need to get studio sorted into some form of awesome home away from home, even tho i won't be able to go there much while workin FT. Need a good place to go to to give me hope. Its a bit of a prick of a place to get to.. whenever somebody breaks down on the M5, it takes more than 1/2 hr from home, even if you don't actually go on the M5. On the rare occasion nobody has broke down on the M5, its about 10 min. I need to find some anti-M5 routes that go nowhere near it.
There is a rotten lookin sculpture in Wolli there on the way, which i don't think puts me in a great mood for makin art. Got to find an angle where it inspires me... like, hey if that was put there as public art, maybe... Rather than thinkin hell if that is the standard i will never understand what drugs, etc etc. Its this pukey not quite grass green colour & kinda very standard boring irrelevant shape cut out steel. Its like the sculpture u have when you're not havin a sculpture. A place holder for saying this is where there should be a bit of art. If i sound grumpy its cos i am :P Its too hot today.
generic shiny/painted/rusted steel public sculpture really gives me the shits too. how is it these monkeys get the govt to pay for these godawful works is beyond me. i read a funny comment in the paper the other day - in a review of this years sculptures by the sea. said that the NRMA would reject the quality of the panelbeating exhibited by many of the entrants.
ReplyDeletebut i think getting big public $$ for crap work is a similar skill to writing academic grant applications and the like. you need to be able to bullshit. either that or your work has to be so blindingly stunning that it simply cant be ignored - but even that usually doesnt get you $$ until after you're dead.
every time i drive thru that intersection at the top of william street there and look at Poo on Sticks, it reminds me that the attention/kudos/$$ received by various art (or rather artists) has almost no (and sometimes none at all) connection to the merits of the work. so maybe in that sense, it does actually server a greater purpose.
still, its galling sometimes.
i got to admit i do feel that Public Art should be appreciable by at least a proportion of the Public. i,e, people should enjoy it. Else what is the point?
ReplyDeletehehe poo on sticks is a total classic. U could not buy a more literally crapulous example of disregard of the Public aesthetic. It will go down in history!
it cracks me up - when they (not sure exactly who - the building owners, the council, who?) painted it black to make it less conspicuous, the artist totally got the shits, saying that it had ruined the work, etc...
ReplyDeletehow about the urban streetscape that was horribly disfigured by poo on sticks in the first place? tho really its not poo on sticks anymore. more correctly should be bbq-briquettes on sticks now.
:)
sad thing is, i just discovered that the artist is the same one who a sculpture at the AGNSW that I actually really like: http://collection.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/results.do?id=151000&db=object&keyword-0=stone+circle&field-0=simpleSearchObject&view=detail&searchMode=simple
ReplyDeleteHmm yeah Ken Unsworth. He liked those rocks eh. I think they lose a lot when magified, lumpified & cast into bronze. As pebbles they really appeal, but in bronze they lose it. But yeah painting poos was never going to improve them!
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