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Early in 2005, Channel 4 asked the public to nominate the buildings they wanted to see demolished in the series 'Demolition'. We can do the same here on Big Art Mob. There's a lot of ugly, inappropriate public art out there: badly commissioned, insensitively sited, poorly maintained or just a plain bad idea in the first place. Join BIN-IT and post images of the public art you don't want to see!

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Small Work Horse

Ok, so it's not as horrible as some of the things on this site (see 'bin-it' bad art group). But since I first saw it (almost every day) when I worked for a while in Ealing, I always thought it just seemed too lumpy, dumb and awkward to be beautiful – and too naturalistic, and neither awkward nor ugly enough to be interesting. Also, its proximity to a Lloyds Bank (at the sign of the black horse!)in a shopping centre just doesn't do it for me!

Small Work Horse

Posted on 4th June 2008 by nickp

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Like lambs to the slaughter . . .

. . . or so it was once sprayed on this mural - possibly referring to the BBC employees who filed out of Shepherds Bush tube station every morning on their way to work at BBC Richmond House on the other side of the Green (now an hotel). Who did this, and why? It's an ugly underpass and the mural doesn't make it any better I'm afraid. This sort of thing gives public art a bad name - with me anyway!

BIN IT!

Like lambs to the slaughter . . .

Like lambs to the slaughter . . .

Like lambs to the slaughter . . .

Posted on 7th April 2008 by London

(Viewed 193 times - 1 comment)

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Not waving but drowning

Since 1988, platform 2 at Wakefield's Westgate train station, has housed the sculpture 'A Light Wave' by the Leeds-based artist Charles Quick. The installation comprises a series of wooden planks in the form of waves which are lit by a rippling light at night (apparently, though I've never seen it I know people who have, in the past). The light, combined with the movement of the train sets up a very pleasing rippled-wave effect. Or at least it used to. Now you have to look through a grotty chicken-wire fence, at an overgrown, area reminiscent of a disused municipal tennis court and are made very aware of the impermanence of paint and the vulnerability of materials by the fact that the sculpture has not been looked after too well and needs a good coat of the blue paint it originally had (might have been better made in enamelled metal?).

Charles Quick (http://www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/finearts/artist/cquick.html) is a serious artist working with technology and architecture and deserves better - as do all the viewing public. Wake up Wakefield council and put pressure on National Express East Coast to spruce up this sculpture! It is too visible and too much of an introduction to Wakefield and West Yorkshire to leave in this state!

Not waving but drowning

Posted on 7th April 2008 by nickp

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Down and Out

Painted concrete and mosaic (1989), by Hammersmith's first (and last) sculptor in residence. A neglected and dilapidated public sculpture (it was originally painted differently, had a bench all around it and more mosaics) that probably wasn't a great idea in the first place – apart from anything else, it's a sharp contrast to the difficult and often dysfunctional lives of those who really can be found sleeping on the Green! Apparently it is based on a real 'local character' who used to walk about with his head in the clouds. The work was commissioned by the borough's Public Art Programme in 1989.
I think it's time for it to go!

Down and Out

Posted on 25th March 2008 by nickp

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