22nd January
Only yesterday I put together a post about a long-standing piece of Swindon’s public art. Namely the Tricentre Chi Sculpture in the town centre dating to 1991. But for this post we come up-to-date with the plough horse sculpture on the Gablecross* roundabout.
*Now nicknamed the stablecross roundabout! Ha!
Commissioned as part of Swindon’s New Eastern Village development, finance for it came from section 106 developer funding. What that means is that money was allocated for the explicit purpose. Ergo SBC haven’t spent any of your money on it!
I do hope there’s a strategy in place for taking care of this new piece of public art. I can’t tell you how much it frustrates me that Swindon is blessed with so much public art – yet none of it cared for. The West Swindon sculpture trail being a case in point. But I digress.
Plough Horse is the work of Holly Hickmore – find out more about her here.
I’ve not seen this work in the (horse) flesh as it were – the photos here are courtesy of the Strolling in Swindon Facebook page – link to it under the featured image. It looks perfectly fine from here but it would be nice to get a proper look at sometime. Anyway, the reason for the horse is to reference Swindon’s rural and farming heritage. Well … that’s okay as it goes – but surely we can say that about anywhere in the country? Swindon wasn’t/isn’t on its own in having that?
And still no pig!
So – we’re collecting quite the menagerie now. We’ve got this horse. We’ve also got the cow at the GWH and the ram sculpture on the site of the old cattle market in Old Town. But STILL no HAM. Given that Swindon is alleged (though it’s by no means certain) to have got its name from pigs – Swinedune – (maybe) surely we should have something that references that? Even if it is a myth.
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Without a confirmed commitment to a maintenance budget, it’ll be really interesting to see how this weathers and ages. In the PR puff that accompanied the installation, I noted that the statue has been made from ‘cold cast iron’. It would have been more honest perhaps to have described it as having been made from either a resin or a polymer plaster. Nothing necessarily wrong with either of those products, but their longevity in an exposed outside location is much less assured than something cast from *actual* metal. UV and hot and cold destroys these products relatively quickly. Using a real cast metal would also have been a fine tribute to a town with such deep roots in engineering and which had it’s own world famous foundry.
Again, with no disrespect to the artist, other missed opportunity was the chance to commission and support one of the numerous local talents who could have produced a meaningful landmark – with the extra benefit of more of the 106 money going back into the local community.
Like you, I’m not entirely inspired by the choice of subject matter, however well it was executed. Opportunities for public art are rare enough, so for me, this example begs a lot of questions about the rationale of the commissioning and selection process, the chosen subject matter and the engagement the finished piece is supposed to create within the community.
At the end of the day, Swindon is becoming so bereft of contemporary culture and art, that nothing new can be unwelcome. But this feels to me like something of a missed opportunity, given the budget. Let’s hope it’s at least a step in the right direction, rather than an excuse for art and sculpture being alive and well in Swindon at the moment.
Hello Ever Hopeful – I rather suspect I know who you are! 😉
I agree with all you’ve said pretty much.
But, regarding engagement in the community … I’ve posted this blog post in the Swindon Community notice board on Facebook and there’s been a reasonable amount of positive engagement and people saying how much they like it. So it might be you and I that are out of step there!
Regarding engagement, I rather meant regarding the development of the concept and theme of the piece – was that done in concert with the people of Swindon? There has also been quite a lot of commentary as well as to how a horse is kinda neither here nor there regarding the town. It’s just a random animal plonked onto a roundabout under a rather flimsy pretext. At least it wasn’t yet another bloody bronze hare! But it’s otherwise rather unimaginative and reassuringly ‘SBC and developer safe’. No one can blame the artist for choosing something politically acceptable and financially profitable if that’s the brief they were given. (And given the career arcs of CEOs and local politicians, of course neither developer nor SBC will give two hoots if the jesmonite or resin starts to crack or crumble in 15 years time.)
This being Swindon, I fear ‘a nice horsey’ is about as far as that engagement goes. Does it stimulate a relevent conversation about Swindon’s heritage and history? The skills and memories and experiences of its urban community? Swindon peoples hopes for the future? It’s right next to the unsung history of South Martson for gods sake!
Good art is also supposed to challenge, inspire and stimulate. You could stick a sculpture of a horse almost literally anywhere in the UK and state ‘it represents the heritage if this area’ with equal (ir)relevance. What about something that might buck, if you excuse the pun, the external perception of Swindon as bland, unimportant and mediocre? Does this do that? 🙁
It represents something to me. A missed opportunity snatched from and rare but welcome chance.
Ah! I’m with you. Sorry. Not knowing my geography I’ve no idea where it is. But yes … the Hammer Man poet!