Tetherd Cow Ahead

Here in sunny Sydney we do a lot of things right. We have beautiful parks and gardens, stunning beaches, great restaurants and some inspiring architecture.

But there is one area in which we get it oh-so-conspicuously wrong. Bad wrong. Tragic wrong. Sad, sad, sad wrong.

Public Art. Sydney is really good at making really bad public art.

I find myself currently in the process of designing a public art work ((I say ‘public’ but I should clarify – my aural artwork will appear where only the very wealthy will experience it, but it is in a space that by proper definition is public. Anyone can hear it, if they can afford it…)) and my philosophical musings have ranged far and wide in an effort not to commit some of the same atrocities I have witnessed around me. As a consequence, I have amassed a sizeable collection of these artistic clunkers and, well, I feel duty bound not to keep the hoard to myself.

So Cow-o-philes, here begins a series of posts about the bad public art of the Harbour City. A kind of Bad Public Art Guided Tour of Sydney, if you will.

There is so much of this stuff that it’s hard to know where to start, so let me begin by introducing you to one of my local tragedies: The Garbage Bins of Newtown.

I can’t actually recall the date that the plain trash bins along King Street were first clad in these appalling – I don’t even know what to call them – sculptures? I walk past them every day and I still can’t tell you what I’m meant to be gleaning from these works.

Are those things slugs? Dog turds? Flatworms? As near as I can make out, they appear to be making their way out of the top of the bin to conglomerate in a wormy mass near the bottom:

Seriously: what process went on in the artist’s brain?

Garbage bins. Newtown. Hmmm. Lots of dogs in Newtown. Dog turds. Garbage. Slimy. Attracts slugs. And flatworms. Yeah, flatworms. People on their way to work early in the morning. See garbage bins every day. Bright morning sun. Sleepy commuters getting ready for the day. Dog turds. Flatworms. Slugs.

Attached to some of the bins are little plaques with scrawly handwriting:

… but this writing does not explain the slugs. In fact, even a quick perusal confirms that it is the ravings of a complete lunatic (which does put us some way down the path to an explanation, I guess…).

Now, I really hesitate to speculate on how much it cost to make these things, because I know it is going to make me feel even more nauseous than the dog turd/flatworm/slug motif. But they can’t have been cheap – the slugs themselves appear to be cast in bronze and inlaid in stainless steel sheets. There are four panels on each bin. About ten bins (maybe more). Plus, presumably, the artist was paid something for these (I’m in two minds about this – on the one hand I really hope for their sake it was a LOT because let’s face it, it’s not something they’re ever going to put on their resumé. On the other hand, I suppose I helped pay for this out of my taxes).

So, I am left with these weighty questions:

How can anyone have thought this was a good idea? Does anyone actually like these? Or am I the only one who’s ever noticed? Does the person on the council who commissioned them ever catch the bus first thing in the morning?

Google Maps reference for King St, Newtown, Australia.

1 Corinthians 6:

‘Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God’

I guess that rules out Just. About. Everyone.

Brushes With Fame #4

The year would have been 1980 to the best of my memory. I was about 22 and my day job was working as a floor audio assistant for a major Sydney TV station. By night I was mixing sound for my brother’s electro-folk band.

Tuesdays was the weekly Limerick Castle gig which we’d been doing for several months. We turned up on time as usual but the pub was closed up. Or I should say, the main front door was closed – looking over the back fence we could see that the lights were on and everything was prepared for opening. But it was Marie Celeste-ville baby. We hung around for half an hour but nothing happened. ((This is in the days w-a-a-a-y before mobile phones, so we had no real way of getting in touch with the owners.))

We decided to go around the corner to an arcade (‘Fonzie’s’) where we could spend some coins playing video games. This is in the days w-a-a-a-y before computers, so this was a novelty. ((We figured we’d call on back in another half hour and see if there was any movement at the station. In the event, there wasn’t. And then the Limerick Castle closed down so we never played that gig again. What happened remains a mystery.))

Our favourite arcade game was the old classic Asteroids. Yeah, it looks kinda passé now but at the time it was the bees knees.

It was a quiet night in Fonzie’s and we were pretty much the only ones there. We were there for fifteen minutes blipping away and blowing up chunks of interstellar space debris when this tall, quiet American chap loped up to have a gander at what we were doing. We made affable conversation.

“How does it work?” he said.

“Here, hop on,” I said, plugging in a twenty cent piece. I showed him how to use the controls. He got the hang of it pretty fast and did much better than a first-timer, but declined a second game. He hung around and watched for a while, this older, quietly spoken guy, chatting amiably, and then sauntered off. Our little troupe of avant garde folkies didn’t give it much thought.

Next day I was at work, preparing the floor audio for a national popular variety and chat show. I’d already scanned down the guest list – we often did big name interview segments as I’ve mentioned before – and the only person of any note today was Noel Paul Stookey, better known as the ‘Paul’ from the legendary folk group Peter, Paul & Mary. I was rigging the boom when in walked the lanky Yank.

He looked up to where I stood, cable and mic in hand, and gave me a cheerful ‘Hi! How ya doin’ man?’

It was of course, Paul Stookey.

The looks on the faces of the rest of the floor crew were priceless.

What my house will look like when the renovations are finally completed…

While browsing the fantastic Public Domain images at Northwestern University Library (as one does) I came upon this eerie poster.

Eerie alright. Eerie, and somehow… familiar. Those beady eyes… that lurking menace… the very chill of fear in your bones…