First it made Emma McDonald nervous (Canberra Times online, Dec 9th, 2007) and now Ian Warden (CT, 13 January, p.19) picks up on our previous post (architecture gives art a bad name). Yes, the question of public art is complex, but unlike other complex questions which surround most other art, in the case of public art you don’t have a choice.

So what did Warden have to say? With a journalistic flourish, he says, in our “heathen rage” we’re “obsessed” with the $750,000 cost! Well, no, Ian, unless one mention in 95 lines of commentary is obsessive. He then goes on, and on, (obsessively you might say) to invoke other great and expensive purchases by the NGA and NGV that were controversial at the time they were acquired. And concludes that we dissenters, heathens, “rabble” in fact, should share his awe at the Rhizome, and “cultivate the humility required to learn to appreciate it”. This is Pulitzer Prize material, Ian, keep it up (in private).

The decisions made about the aesthetics of public space does affect us all. For example, wait till you see how some genius has relocated the interactive glass cube sculpture just five meters off the Ainslie Avenue axis at the eastern entrance to the Canberra Centre!!! Remember how the Vicar of Dibley responded to a proposal of marriage? So this is our alternative to running around the village screaming…