Public art may be hitting the buffers, after years in which it swept all before it. An installation devised for Cardigan in Wales, by an alliance of local people and artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – as part of Channel 4's Big Art project – has been shelved. The strength of local opposition was apparently so intense and unbending, that to go on would have been against the democratic ideals of the Big Art venture.
It's interesting how art's meaning is changed when it goes public, when it invades the space in which people might expect to be free from ideas, challenges, strangeness. Walking to the shops, do you want to be challenged? Do you want to see art? Well, why not? Part of me is a public-art sceptic. And yet, the moment art is banned or destroyed or, as in this case, aborted, I am on its side. The campaigners who prevented this sound piece from polluting their river look like philistines. They look unimaginative. And yes, I am saying this from the metropolis. But why are so many stories about the arts in Wales about the arts being prevented in Wales?
The most famous cultural episode in modern Wales remains the refusal to commission a building by Zaha Hadid. Wouldn't it be better to be known for having her opera house than for not having it? Ah yes, how bitter they are in Bilbao that Gehry's Guggenheim spoiled their waterfront.
The Big Art piece was hardly in that league, but it was a modest local answer to such famous projects. We might argue for years about the merits of particular works of architecture and art, but the truth is that people who campaign for years – years, mind you – to prevent an innocuous artwork from being placed in their river are clearly the enemies of creativity and imagination. It's not a rock festival, just a sculpture.
Yes, public art is often dull and silly. Its vogue has been overdone. But the joke is always on its enemies when they end up speaking for a vision of a cultureless, mindless, joyless Britain and chant the slogan "no art here, thanks!"
