Big Metal Flowers Painted Yellow

OK Cow-o-philes, on to Stop #3 on the Bad Public Art Tour of Sydney, in which we see how the citizens of Sydney support ‘The Arts’ with their hard-earned dollars.

This work was constructed some years ago in the Sydney district known as Darling Harbour. It’s hard to convey in a photograph exactly how cheap and daggy ((‘Daggy’ is a slang word peculiar to Australia and New Zealand which is something like a cross between ‘goofy’, ‘unfashionable’ and ’embarrassing’)) it is in actuality. Suffice to say that it is a blessing that it is hidden away in a place where few people will ever see it (fittingly flanked by an overpass and an IMAX theatre).

I have heard this piece referred to as a ‘flannel flower’ and I sincerely hope this is not what it is meant to be. This is what flannel flowers look like:

Flannel Flowers

Note the lack of vivid sickly yellow colour, and attend to the petal count.

I’m not really able to tell you much about this effort. A long search on the web has turned up nothing of value. Personally, I’d just as soon see the actual ‘artwork’ itself disappear into the same kind of obscurity.