COLIN CAMPBELL: The era of bizarre city artwork, and the mystery of why any of it was built
The Courier carried an interesting article earlier this week online and in print: “Explained: the mysterious three trees artwork in Inverness city centre.”
This was about the three piles of slabs at the top of Church Street with frail little trees sticking out of the middle. An update on this 15 years after it appeared in 2008 was certainly a valiant attempt to explain why it was there.
The problem is it’s difficult if not impossible to explain the inexplicable.
Why was this assemblage of unsightly junk ever dumped there in the first place? It caused a great deal of controversy at the time – not least because of the cost in public money, an astonishing £80,000.
The powers that be decided it was necessary to create what would be called The Three Virtues at the location. This would be based on the principles of “Perseverance, Open Heartedness and Insight”. A period of debate on this was concluded with a gathering of 25 people at an event called “The Philosopher’s Salon”.
After they’d emerged from their salon, the 25 philosophers gave the green light for this creation, which resonated “Open Heartedness” and “Insight”, as stone slabs piled on top of each other so obviously do. In their minds at least. Just about everyone else was totally mystified by it.
Any rational reason why it was built at such huge cost remains non-existent to this day.
But the artwork enthusiasts, fully backed by the council with an apparently bottomless pit of money, didn’t stop there. Next up was an elaborate mural on a wall near Eastgate. The centrepiece of this was a vagrant who’d been a “character” in Inverness decades ago. That cost at least £60,000. It decayed, probably as quickly as he had, and within two or three years was peeling off and falling apart. It was then removed and that was the end of that.
Next in the bizarre artwork era came a plan for a sculpture at Friars Shott, on the riverside. An “artist” was commissioned for that too. It’s still there now. At least it’s still standing. It looks like a bit of a wall in two jagged sections after a ball and chain has been smashed through the middle. That cost another £60,000 of public money.
And still the enthusiasm for more useless artwork burned brightly, as did the rising antipathy and public scepticism over the continual waste of money. But the council’s Inverness City Arts group seemed intent on ensuring things went from bad to worse. Through commissioned “artists” they came up with the Tilting Pier, a hugely expensive concrete slab which would jut out over the river.
Then followed the most bizarre notion of all. It would be located in Ness Walk, near Inverness Cathedral and Eden Court, where people are content to peacefully stroll along the riverside without any gimmickry disrupting a quiet and beautiful setting. That proved too much. After a public backlash a majority of councillors finally saw sense and the pier plan tilted into oblivion, where it very obviously belonged.
But they weren’t done yet. To top it all came the Gathering Place on the riverside beside the Bught. Dismissing a 3000-strong petition opposing the madness, councillors pressed ahead and hired a construction firm to rip up an unspoilt stretch of riverside and install a giant concrete slab to replace the grass and the greenery at a hitherto cherished natural location. That cost a staggering £300,000 in public money. It ruined the beauty spot, and still seems as pointless and wasteful as it is ugly and intrusive.
We may now have reached the end of the hideously expensive and utterly pointless artwork era. Lessons seem to have finally been learned. People do not want vast sums of money spent on vanity projects of no benefit to the environment and created for no identifiable reason. It began with The Three Virtues. Why was it all built? No one really knows. All we do know is we most assuredly don’t want to see any more of it.
