24 October 2007

Monument to the Sonic

| Kerces
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Steve Pratt is a man that might not know much about art, but he knows what he likes.

And he doesn’t like the new $750,000 sculpture lining the Gungahlin Drive Extension.

In fact, Mr Pratt has called series of metal spikes apparently representing indigenous grasses another of Jon Stanhope’s “self-aggrandizing follies with little or no benefit to the community”.

He says that far from being grasses, the sculpture actually represents Mr Stanhope’s “startled” hairstyle (no, really he does).

He thinks the money would have been better spent fixing potholes, building traffic calming measures, playground equipment, public building grey water schemes for watering ovals or keeping the Griffith Library open for another 18 months.

Not that he begrudges the community having a bit of public artwork. No, he’s not that much of a philistine — he’d just like the government to spend only $10,000 (or preferably less) to engage “a budding artist willing to give of their time to create tasteful, embossed murals placed on the concrete facades depicting the ‘indigenous grasses’ “.

Tasteful, embossed murals of which he approves, of course. And which don’t depict anyone’s hairstyle.

So does anyone have a picture of this monument to the Sonic cut?

[ED- Pot Holes has provided a link to the GDE Public Art brochure here.]

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barking toad12:01 pm 24 Oct 07

More embarassing questions from my visitors to Canberra

“what the fark is that crap?!”

“Err, it represents indigenous grasses”

“So what the fark is it?!” “And what the fark are they?”

Pratt is usually a prat. But in this case his criticism is spot on.

Agreed, futto. A road full of potholes is a work of art in itself.

Give me a nice work of art over a fixed pothole any day.

Vic Bitterman10:55 pm 23 Oct 07

God stanhope is a waste of taxes. Sooner he and his cronies get voted out – purely for pissing our tax dollars up the wall in an unaccountable fashion – the better.

agreed with the VNBerlina there, waste of $750,000 of our money for a rock on a tower and some spikes, but then again the government are paying someone $1mil for another fugly looking thing for northbourne ave, the pics on the front of the CT today confirm this.

As for mr pratt, he does occasionally make sense. and if the government weren’t absolute morons and updated their “public grafitti sites” register and on their website, the removal of the other “artwork” may never have happened, abeit I think the pratt could have picked a better example of grafitti to remove.

Why doesn’t Pratt go do a “Pratt special” and “clean up” (ie vandalise) the artwork, as he did with that nasty “grafitti”.

D I C K H E A D !

Well i guess Mr Pratt better get busy with tearing the metal spikes down then.

After all, he is a professional when it comes to destroying public artwork. He’s the best man for the job.

The same people who agree that CEOs should get millions for “managing” a company for the benefit of shareholders and the detriment of consumers, also believe that artists should “volunteer” their intellectual property and return to starve in the proverbial garret.

I don’t know if he’s talking about the multi-coloured metal towers with rocks sitting on top, but if so, the $750 000 figure scares me.

I reckon the gateway cartoon the CT had earlier this year was spot-on. A massive colossus in the image of Sonic would be far more appropriate

el ......VNBerlinaV86:40 pm 23 Oct 07

I hate to say it, but if another $750 000 of tapayer dollars has been thrown down the toilet for this, then he’s kinda got a point.

Has anyone confirmed the $750,000 figure from another source?

Ingeegoodbee6:19 pm 23 Oct 07

You could have stopped at “Steve Pratt…” and left the rest blank so we could slot in whatever bizarre whinge this useless scrap of failed ex-spy toe-jam we could think of. Pratt by name, prat by nature.

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