Invisible art
Clackmannanshire is beginning to invest in a big way in public art. I love this, but others consider it an outrageous use of public money. My two favourite until this week were 'This journey's end' , which is on the first roundabout after the bridge over the most south easterly of the county’s bridges over the Forth as you approach from Glasgow or Edinburgh. It's almost lyrical but it's also such an incongruous image for the area that it preoccupies for many minutes after you've passed it; and Foxboy, another sculpture which provokes because incongruous - it's in a hillfoots village, which seems so dour that nothing at all suggests the whimsy of the sculpture. However, both have had to concede first place to new sculptures in Alloa town centre.
Clackmannanshire is beginning to invest in a big way in public art. I love this, but others consider it an outrageous use of public money. My two favourite until this week were 'This journey's end' , which is on the first roundabout after the bridge over the most south easterly of the county’s bridges over the Forth as you approach from Glasgow or Edinburgh. It's almost lyrical but it's also such an incongruous image for the area that it preoccupies for many minutes after you've passed it; and Foxboy, another sculpture which provokes because incongruous - it's in a hillfoots village, which seems so dour that nothing at all suggests the whimsy of the sculpture. However, both have had to concede first place to new sculptures in Alloa town centre.
The centre is being radically made over, and promises to be stunningly elegant as a result, with pride of place given to three 'invisible' statues by Ron Mulholland - Mulholland's specialty. This is a photo of some of his work (taken from the BBC News Scotland website (16 February 2010), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8518153.stm) There are four statues in this one. They're made of highly polished stainless steel, reflect their surroundings, and so disappear:
The Alloa statues were unveiled yesterday, but they're once again covered with bubble wrap to protect them from dust raised by workmen completing their installation (photo by Brian Smith, Alloa Online, http://www.alloa.org.uk/ [Accessed 6 May 2010]).
No comments:
Post a Comment