A trio of sculptures costing £26,000 which residents have likened to elephant poo have been defended by the council.
The “organic shapes” were installed by Portslade Town Hall as part of Brighton and Hove City Council’s new Victoria Road housing development.
They are meant to evoke the tides, with weathered bricks suggesting erosion and metal hoops tide lines.
But reaction amongst the public has been mixed, with some commenters saying they resemble another kind of organic substance.
One commenter said: “Looks like a giant elephant had made a visit.”
Another said: “What an incredible waste of taxpayers’ money, and what an insult to local residents. These look like enormous lumps of dog excrement.”
A council spokesman said: “We are aware that public art installations can sometimes divide local opinion.
“But the most important thing is that our award winning Victoria Road development has created really high quality new homes for around 40 families in need.
“There is a national shortage of affordable accommodation and we believe most residents will be delighted that we are taking such positive steps to address this problem locally.
“As part of our planning processes we ask all developers to make a public art contribution. In this instance the developer was the council.
“We can’t simply pick and choose which parts of the planning process we comply with.
“The total cost of £26,000 was only slightly over the minimum £25,000 allowed.”
The sculptures were designed by artist Felicity Hammond and developed with architecture and ideas studio CAN.
A press release announcing the installation says: “Hammond and CAN have produced a cluster of three organic forms appearing as weathered sections of brickwork, washed up and castaway by the sea.
“The forms are made from cement mixed with an aggregate of waste bricks leftover from the construction of the new housing. Sited in the central civic space of the development, fragments of brick are revealed on the polished surface of the sculptures, mimicking the way that the tide erodes and smoothes industrial materials.
“The history of the site and its coastal location are embedded in the processes used to make the artwork, which references the local former brickfield and the polishing company that once occupied the adjacent town hall.
“The polished brick forms in place are a series of steel hoops, which at once blend into the aesthetic of municipal design yet also stand out, like a warning or a marker.
“The painted steel mimics the change in texture on the concrete forms, suggesting a rising tidal line; a hint at the challenges faced by coastal towns.
“Through this gesture, Forecast responds to the very nature of permanence in relation to public art, asking its audience not only to consider the material histories related to the site, but also its future form.”
Meanwhile, the housing development itself has won an award for energy efficiency at the first national Unlock Net Zero Awards.
Victoria Road is one of the largest schemes completed so far in the city’s New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme, building much-needed homes for rent on council-owned land.
Its 42 homes are a mix of one, two and three bedroom flats in two buildings, Jay Court and Perching Court.
Councillor Gill Williams, Deputy Leader and Chair of the Housing and New Homes committee, said: “Victoria Road marks a milestone on the way to achieving the city’s net zero ambition.
“The sustainability features on the new homes will reduce carbon emissions as well as helping residents manage their energy bills.
“This is the future of social housing.”
It’s the first time the council has used a ground source heat pump system in a new council housing scheme in the city to supply heating and hot water for the homes, which are also highly insulated. Extra support is being given to tenants to help them run the system efficiently and minimise energy bills.
Electricity generated from 168 solar panels will power communal services, including lighting and power in communal ways and external lighting. They are designed to provide 63,500kW, saving 14.09 tonnes of carbon.
The scheme has planted ‘living’ walls, bat boxes, and bird and bee bricks to encourage biodiversity, and a communal garden for residents which includes fruit trees and a wildflower lawn area.
Try getting councillors who voted for the spend , to pay for it out of their own pockets. In other words , ” put your money where your mouth is”.
Good idea . They should pay.
Get the councillors who voted for it ” to put your money where your mouth is” and pay for it out of your own money!
Need to wobble a few heads.
Especially at times when major financial difficulties for people.Not to mention homeless & people living in slums.
Absolutely madness!
Here come the philistines, right on cue.
I think the real philistines are the morons who inflicted such expensive rubbish on the public.
What an utter pile of kak!
Whoever at the Council who authorised this needs help.
How can BHCC possibly justify this when it has a £3m budget deficit?
Very true. Utter waste of money.
The council budget deficit is now allegedly £13m – how can they waste any money on this?
It just needs a plaque.
‘Jumbo’s Jobbies’
Washed up sections of weathered, broken-off brickwork has style , magical charm. Time travellers with unknown heritage. Do they come from dumped waste? From housing lost to coastal erosion? These home made lumps are not Art. They are poor imitations of the real things. Pathetic.
Beyond the cost of that sculpture, it’s just really, really bad. My first thought is that it’s a couple of bricks sanded down, with some rails put in as an afterthought when Health and Safety Inspectors came around wearing their lab coats, safety goggles, and clipboards, shaking their heads, pointing out how someone could climb that, fall off it, and smack their head, causing a traumatic brain injury, requiring quick hospital conveyance before the swelling causes coning, and subsequent death of the patient.
To each his own though, I did Graphics Design A-Level in school. I like my straight edges!
“The forms are made from cement mixed with an aggregate of waste bricks leftover from the construction of the new housing. Sited in the central civic space of the development, fragments of brick are revealed on the polished surface of the sculptures, mimicking the way that the tide erodes and smoothes industrial materials.”
A case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
It’s amazing what passes for art nowadays and how many brainless clowns are prepared to squander so much taxpayers’ money on these objets d’art(?) It would have been cheaper to have acquired genuine elephant poo. They probably would not have noticed the difference anyway.
Meanwhile all of those involved in the installation should be made to enrol on a proper art course, or, in the case of planners, a proper planning course. They might learn something useful.
More to the point, how on Gods Earth did this monstrosity cost £26,000? Ffs, She didn’t even have to buy the materials, they were ‘insight’!. £26,000 is just plainly robbery.
*onsight* sodding autocorrect….
Is the “artist” related to anyone on the council per chance?
They can’t waste our money quick enough
Complete waste of TAXPAYERS MONEY – how do THE RATE-PAYERS rate this utter heap of NON_ART !! That would go towards FILLING IN SOME OF THE HOLES IN THE LOUSY ROADS among other things…..!!!!
It’s offensive to Portslade. Lots of people say it’s a poo area to live and sticking giant Poo there is not on. We are not Poo-tslade we are portslade and proud
It’s uguly
As usual, the vocal anti art brigade complain about “a waste of public money” when actually it wasn’t paid for with public money, as was made perfectly clear in the article for those with the skills to read it.
It says the the developer paid for it and “in this case the developer was the council” … so I think it was public money.
Either way though, when larger development private schemes get approval they tend to come with some sort of commitment to the local council to put money into an area (a section 106 agreement) This could be affordable housing, building a school, upgrading local infrastructure or installing something like this. So when you think about it, even then it’s a form of public money as there has been trade off in return for this private contribution and the council has complete control over how that contribution is used.
As art goes – looks quite dissapppinting to me.
That is not art. That is an embarrassment. We have so much great artists in the UK and this is what the council bought. Oh dear.
Oh dear. Complete pretentious garbage to justify bad sculpture. Go to see Derek Jarman’s scultural vision at Dungeness. That is real and beautiful. This hideous aesthetically unpleasing load of crap is so dreadful and they couldn’t even cut the surrounding weeds down.
You can talk up anything in the art world. It all justifies it’s meaning to the people responsible.
It doesn’t even fit into it’s surroundings.
I agree. Description of an idea is one thing. The Art is another. This piece of work reminds me of telly tubby land. Its a weak concept with a facile, literal execution. A pile of bricks weathering over time would have more resonance. Like so much in art and politics these days, the words are not substantiated by the actions.
Oh dear the council at it again 🙄 it looks like what it is rubbish, like the light installation on seafront then u have butt plug alley sory I mean circus Street don’t forget the most corny is the Aqua man plaques sorry the posiden lord of water deserves an award as the worst 😉