Turner prize winner Rachel Whiteread is not a fan of ‘plop art’: public sculptures plonked somewhere in an apparently random and inconspicuous fashion.
“Art has gotten extremely popular, which is great for many reasons but I think a lot of public sculpture is ill-thought-out and put in places it shouldn’t necessarily be. It then becomes something that is sort of invisible,” the artist said, speaking ahead of a major retrospective of her work at Tate Britain.
She added that London was “completely full of sculptures which no one bears a blind bit of attention to” – although she declined to name the offending pieces.
Then there are the public artworks that people most certainly do pay attention to. Unremarkable is not a word you’d use to describe Bradford’s droid Baby of the North sculpture, for example - or the big blue cock Katharina Fritsch installed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Meanwhile bemusement and wonder has greeted the giant Sean Henry sculptures in Woking town centre, put there in the summer by the Lightbox gallery and museum to pique interest in an exhibition of the artist’s work.
Public art has always been fiercely divisive, and in every instance there are those who pour scorn on the councils who help commission and fund it. But love it, hate it, or just don’t get it, public art will always be a talking point.
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