Thursday 28 October 2010

A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain - Owen Hatherley

Ok, it's not directly about public art but this new book about urban regeneration during the Labour reign is sort of related. In fact public art gets mentioned - witheringly - in the second sentence of this article. The next thing to give public art a bad name.
What the author doesn't talk about is the conditions under which these sorts of projects were funded - often through the RDAs and often with challenging deadlines for completion, leading to rush jobs and an inability to comply with best practice, whether for commissioning artists or anything else.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/owen-hatherley-ruins-great-britain
(I particularly like the Guardian quick link which has distilled it to 'owen-hatherley-ruins-great-britain' - oh come now, it wasn't all his fault.)

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