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!